


The Bowl of Snow

by JaneEyre1847



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, But There Are SUITORS, Canon-Typical Ableism, Canon-Typical Jon is Emotionally Dumb, Canon-Typical Violence, Daenerys Targaryen Is Not a Mad Queen, Dragonriding, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, How else do you think she communicated with them??? They barely have ears., Jealousy (Jon), Jonerys Forever, POV Jon Snow, Pregnancy, Psychic Dragons, R Plus L Equals J, Slow Burn, Smut, Unreliable Narrator, but - Freeform, canon-typical incest, mention of infertility, mention of miscarriage, season 8 fix-it, trauma is real
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-16
Updated: 2020-01-24
Packaged: 2020-12-20 17:29:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 19
Words: 90,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21060458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JaneEyre1847/pseuds/JaneEyre1847
Summary: Completely written. Updates one to three times per week. All aboard the lovesick-fool train!After Jon learns his true identity, honor demands he reject what he loves most, though his heart rebels. And, while Daenerys may be suffering, she remains the Queen of both Westeros and the Bay of Dragons, with all the power, resources, and attraction she has earned.Story is focused on emotional realism, including PTSD. Jon is show-canon freaked about the incest thing, because he really didn't pay much attention to his history lessons.





	1. Two Bonds

_"Rickard Flint will not cower in the lap of the Dragon Queen nor stand with those who do. Breakstone Keep will stand fast, as it has for 4,000 years. We fear no dead, only live oathbreakers." _  
  
_Fuck._  
  
Jon picked up his quill to write a biting reply, then threw it down again. There was nothing to be done for it. Lord Flint--and Lord Glover and Lady Dustin, whose missives implied the same--would die in their keeps, and their smallfolk and women and heirs would die with them. Even if Jon sent one more raven to beg them to come to Winterfell, by the time he received their sneering responses, the first of them would be wearing blue eyes.

He could never regret offering Daenerys his sword, but in moments like these....

Jon rubbed his eyes, probably getting ink on his face, and realized he bloody hurt all over, and the war hadn't even started yet. He'd been in his shuttered solar all morning and through luncheon, and his eyes stung from glaring at scrolls in the half dark and scribbling out responses. His arse ached from the hard chair he'd been occupying. His head hurt from dealing with the Northern lords who were here, most so pissy and rebellious despite the loss of the Wall that he longed to be shot of them all.

He had his sisters to frown over too, women now so cool and secretive he couldn't begin to get a proper read on them half the time, and seeing them be so cold and unwelcoming to Dany had been a sore disappointment. He'd wanted them so badly to love her, though with Sansa at least, he should've known better. She'd always been a bit nasty to girls prettier than her, and the things that had happened to her--to them all--had made her bitter as wormwood toward outsiders. The only good pain was in his stones, which ached a bit since he'd caught Dany in a deserted hallway when she was heading to her camp inspections. She'd given him a little stroking through his breeches while he'd bussed her against the wall, and he'd gotten used to having his way with her after such business on-ship.

He stretched his spine out with a grunt and decided that enough was enough. He preferred the latter ache a thousand times over all the rest. He'd go find his queen and hopefully improve both their moods. She'd been grieving in her impervious, tightly controlled way since Bran had sprung the terrible news about Viserion on them all. The only thing that seemed to help her was his own touch and attention. When he'd snuck to her rooms last night after supper, she'd wept in his arms and then made fierce love to him, as if together they could make life take the place of death. Now he had much and more to discuss with her, some good, some bad, and one thing that had been weighing on him, as heavy as the war itself. And, maybe he'd get something useful done on his way to her--check on the construction of the trenches or somesuch--and ease his constant, low-grade terror about Winterfell not being prepared for the armies of the dead.

When he stepped out of the castle's muddy courtyard and into the snowed-over area of the camps, he saw that all the armies had been settled since they'd arrived yesterday. Bran had told them that they had perhaps five days until the dead arrived, and they were spending every second preparing. He looked out over the mile-wide sea of wind-whipped tents and wondered how in the hells he was going to find her.

Locating her armies was easy enough--he just followed his nose. The Dothraki lived off horsemeat and goat, and had thrived as nomads for generations, so their camps were one of the few places that didn't stink of pigshit and open latrines. Then he spotted the Unsullied parked beside them, the Dothraki's opposite as a culture, but so immaculate that no smell but the whiff of their bland meals, strange liniments, and pack animals ever crept out. He shook his head thinking of how his own people were so high and mighty about "filthy foreign savages" when the only people here who smelled worse than they did were the Free Folk, now that they couldn't access the icy rivers they liked to bathe in.

As he neared the Essosi camps, he let his gaze blur and widen, using the hunter's gaze he'd learned from his wolf dreams as Ghost. He saw only movement and color, looking for anything that hinted at Daenerys' location. Sure enough, past the caltrops that would serve as marks for the archers, deep in the Unsullied camp, a slim patch of snowy white distinguished itself from the frozen ground by moving at a stately pace beside a lumbering, brown smear. It was Dany, sauntering in her white fur coat, with her silver-gold hair, accompanying the maester's wagon on its visits to poorly troops. His whole body gladdened at the sight of her.

He set off to intersect with her, boots crunching the icy soil, blustery wind tearing at his cloak. Seeing her made the sere landscape of flapping tents on scarred earth instantly feel like summer. When he'd come back home to the North, he'd felt like some elemental part of himself had slotted back into place. The landscape had a rightness to him that came from looking at it every day of his life for 23 years. The mountains were the right height to draw the eye up to the vast cold sky, the trees grew properly in their forests, and the people were as familiar as old boots in their dress and ways. The South had been alien in all its textures, scents, and contours. That the constant rasp of unwelcomeness, unworthiness, and danger he felt here returned to him along with the landscape was no surprise. It was a companion as constant in his childhood as Robb.

With Dany, though, the pain of home fell away for long moments, until there was nothing but pleasure and peace. He'd never realized it was possible to feel such a way until he'd worked up the courage to go to her cabin on the journey to White Harbor. Gods, he'd been scared to death when he'd knocked on that door. But she'd welcomed him in wordlessly, all her sharp edges seemingly softened away, like a waterworn stone.

When he'd closed her door behind him, ready for some awkward talk he'd have to bluster his way through, she'd simply said tremulously, "I'm glad you came. I'd have gone to you otherwise," and stepped so close to him he could feel her warmth through his clothes.

He'd reached for her half-frightened, jewel-like face, barely believing he was allowed to do such a thing, and their first kiss had been his first true homecoming. They'd been so vulnerable, and so desperate for each other. Her sweet, hot, open mouth had pulled him in as they stood together in breathless shock that they were actually coming together. She'd opened herself to him, welcoming him into her with every touch of her furnace-like body, and he'd moved into her as if his muscles and bones were yearning for her and her alone. They'd stripped and explored each other with something like reverence, if holiness could include torn breeches laces and slick, starving mouths. Then, when he'd driven himself inside her the first time, he'd frozen in something like fear. Her body had pulsed all around him like a storm, gripping him so tight she might've been a maiden, but he couldn't move to save his life. He'd had to just look in her eyes to see if somehow his feeling of belonging, of rightness, could possibly be something she felt as well. Her eyes had been clear wells of awe, and, he could scarcely believe it, love. In that moment, he'd known in his scarred heart that he never wanted to be away from her again. The memory was so sweet he could hardly let himself think of it as he crossed through all these makings of war. And, it made him sure of what he had to do.

When he circled around the Unsullied's fleet of supply wayns, she spotted him, and he put away his soppy expression while he passed among her troops to get to her. As he entered the Unsullied camp proper, the soldiers, to a man, looked up from what they were doing to nod firmly at him and murmur some honorific as he went. They were not gossipy (unlike the Dothraki, whom Dany grumpily compared to Braavosi fishwives for their endless rumormongering), but they passed around security-related information like the pox. They had learned on Dragonstone that their Queen sought his counsel, then that he would sling a pickaxe alongside common soldiers in the dragonglass mine, and then that he had gone on a near-fatal mission to support her campaign against Cersei Lannister. At each step, the Unsullied warmed to him more. Then, on the ship, despite their attempts at discretion, folk had apparently learned that he was welcome in her cabin at all hours, and suddenly every eunuch soldier deigned to acknowledge him, and Grey Worm had actually smiled once in his presence.

When he and Dany got within talking distance, she dismissed the maester, and he and his queen met in the aisle between the Unsullied and Dothraki entrenchments. She barely smiled at him, but she stopped only far enough away to pretend they weren't lovers. His heart squeezed at the sight of her. She was so gorgeous, even in all this madness, like a wild rose twining around a headsman's block. Then he nodded in the direction she'd been headed and she snuck her little hand around his elbow, as if he were swanning this mighty warrior around a summer garden. The woman made him feel like some fancy swain every time she took his arm, his boots all mucky or not.

"You survived corresponding with your bannermen?" she asked lightly as they stepped around webs of Dothraki tent ropes.

So much for pleasant subjects.

"Aye," he huffed, "Such as they are. The ones on their way will bring us another 3,000 fighters by day after tomorrow, plus a month's supplies for their own. They're evacuating the rest of their people past the Neck as we commanded. Lords Glover and Flint, and Lady Dustin will not come, though, and swear they can stand an assault by the dead lasting years. They don't know what they're talking about, but it's out of my hands now. If they end up in the Night King's path, it's on them."

At that, her face went as somber as he felt again, and it was like the sun disappearing behind clouds.

She said, "If we'd had more time, you might've been able to convince them. Now their smallfolk and families will be shredded alive because their lord is offended that you bent the knee. If the sky wasn't about to fall on us, I'd like to fly out with Drogon and Rhaegal to change their minds." As ever, she said nothing about whose fault it was that they had no time. She blamed herself for Viserion's fall, and the Wall after, while he blamed himself and her fool advisors.

Instead, he asked her, "With fire and blood?" When she gave him _that_ wordless, grim look of hers, he said, "And that would cost us a dozen more Houses." His heart going heavier, he told her, "Earning their trust will take time and diplomacy, not fire and blood. They were ruled by Starks alone for 8,000 years before your ancestors came along, and they will pull at their traces a long time before they accept you, if we even make it out of all this mess. You say you don't want to rule through fear, so some will have to make examples of themselves to the rest."

Her eyes flashed and she said a little hotly. "So a lord's bloody-mindedness spells death for his people, and more soldiers in the Night King's army? What kind of a ruler am I if I let that happen?"

He stopped for a moment and turned to face her, half regretting it as her hand slipped from his arm. "One who is doing the best she can for the most she can help. It's an ugly sacrifice but you and I have both made worse before."

She squinted at the furrowed ground before glaring up at him. "You're right. I know you are. I don't have to like it, though."

"Ah well," he said wryly. "Me being right isn't something you'll likely have to get too accustomed to."

That made her duck her chin to hide her little smile from the soldiers. Then she looked into his eyes and said, "How is it you always make me smile when practically nothing else in the North does?"

He restrained himself from stroking a stray lock of hair away from her cheek as an excuse to touch her. "You'll find things to like here," he promised. "The North is like her people--a bit harsh at first, especially in winter, but full of surprises."

That made her grin like a girl. She asked with a naughty look, "And what kinds of surprises can I look forward to from the North?"

"It wouldn't be a surprise now, if I told you," he grinned back at her, though he was feeling nervy. He gave her his arm again, started them walking, and said casually, "I think you ought to just settle in, be patient, and find yourself a guide."

"A _guide?"_ she asked, the little flirt. "Is there perhaps a pleasant local lad you'd recommend? I find I've a fondness for former brothers of the Night's Watch. Have you any of those about?"

He deadpanned, "I'm the only former one anywhere, I think. I'll have to do."

She stroked his arm with her free hand and said, "Exactly what I was hoping for. Perhaps you'd guide me to the dragons' nest, then. I need to check on them." Then she was all worry again. "They've been off their feed. I can feel that they're grieving."

"Like you," he said, and pulled her arm a bit closer.

She barely nodded at that, and said quietly, "They'll like you coming to see them, though. It helps them."

He startled at that. He'd felt something like that, but to have her say it....

She went on. "You know you're the only person they've let touch them in years, unless I told them to allow it?"

_That_ was a mighty honor.

She went on, "Tyrion touched Viserion and Rhaegal once in Meereen, and then the next person who tried it, a few days later, they killed."

Her voice was squeezed with sadness, so he decided to be rude to jostle her out of it. "I remember the first time Drogon let me touch him, on that cliff at Dragonstone. I thought I'd piss myself, I was so terrified."

It worked, and she laughed, "Your voice was high-pitched as a boy's after." Then her eyes went soft as she said, "My heart was in my mouth when he charged you, but I could feel he just wanted to know you." She leaned into his arm and said, "A bonded dragon doesn't let anyone but his rider near him. Seeing you take off your glove and touch him like he was just a wild horse--" She paused, and said more softly, "That was the first time I hadn't felt alone in so long."

There was much and more he could say to that, but he was holding that until a better time.

"You weren't alone," he said instead. "The one thing I saw over and over at Dragonstone was how your people love you. Most of them worship you. The Northerners just need to get to know you the same way."

She _hmmphed_ at that. "I freed most of my people from generations of slavery, or performed miracles before them. I hope that doesn't have to happen here. I don't need them to worship me, just respect me." Then she frowned. "Ideally, starting with your eldest sister."

They had reached the edge of the Dothraki encampment, and he could see the dragons hunched in the distance, huddled against the emptiness of the desiccated plains.

"She made a bad beginning with you," he admitted, with some pain. "She survived horrors before we retook Winterfell, and for years both her captors and her friends were cunning as vipers and twice as treacherous. She sees evil where there is none because for a long time, she had nothing but evil to see. I think she'd rather kill or die than risk such things coming to Winterfell again. Being in charge makes her feel safe, and every person above her is a threat. She barely tolerates it in me because I'm her brother."

She looked at him seriously as they neared the dragons. "Do I need to fear her? Do we?"

It hurt him that she had to ask that. "No," he said, _"No._ I promise you. I will work on her, and she will understand, sooner or later."

She nodded reluctantly, and then they were close enough to the dragons that the beasts' presence edged out lesser thoughts. Their nest wasn't much of one, just a rough circle of packed, scorched ground, swept of snow and rocks by their massive bodies and kept dry by their ambient heat. He supposed they needed no shelter, though, and were content enough among the charred carcasses of the day's meals.

The vast creatures lumbered toward them, lethal bodies slow as bored lizards on rocks. Their mother went right to them, and put her arms out to Drogon's cart-sized head. The dragon juddered at her and closed his eyes in pleasure at her touch. The green one, Rhaegal, came around to Jon's side and muttered and groaned at him like a fussy sow. He poked his big head at Jon, clearly asking for strokes as well.

_Gods, _Jon thought, _he's just like a big dog. He and Ghost are hardly different._

There was something about being with the dragons that filled him inside. He'd never put the words to it before, but something like strength or joy welled up inside him when he was with them. He stayed wary, because he wasn't stupid, but he liked to lurk about them some every day when he could. They could eat him with one bite and not need to pick their teeth after, but in some ways they felt as loving and eager for his company as any good hound.

He heard the creak of leathery hide as Drogon did his trick of dropping a shoulder to the ground to give Dany a ride to his back. His miracle of a girl swung a leg over the black dragon's enormous spine, casual as mounting a horse, and Drogon chirruped. Jon could somehow feel the big dragon's wash of calm pleasure when his mother was on him. They truly loved her, he realized, not knowing how he knew, but certain of it.

Rhaegal rumbled like a thunderhead and Jon felt a kind of internal _push, _like when he himself was eager to do something and some annoyance was holding him back. Drogon growled a response and the ground trembled as he sidled like a horse to circle behind Jon. Jon spun to keep the big dragon from getting out of his field of vision. He wouldn't turn his back on an aggressive horse, and for Seven Hells wasn't letting a dragon who hadn't been eating well get behind him.

"What d'you think they're talking about?" he asked Dany, who was watching her children with some curiosity.

"I don't kn--" she started, and then stopped flat in the middle of the word. Her mouth closed, then opened again as if she were trying to say something and the words were caught in her throat.

"You all right?" he asked, concerned.

"Jon," she choked out. "Look behind you."

Slowly, so as not to startle the beasts, he turned. Rhaegal was staring at him with his magma eyes, and _his right shoulder was pressed to the ground._

Jon looked at Dany, his eyes bulging like to come out of their sockets._ "Is he-_-is he _asking me--?"_ He couldn't even say the words.

Dany was breathing hard, her eyes bright as amethysts. "He is. I can feel it."

Jon knew she was right. What the dragon wanted was pushing at his mind, like the heat of a fire pushing on his skin. His own heart was hammering in his chest--_he could fly, if he just took that step. Fly--and maybe fall._

"How do I--" his voice had risen an octave. "How do I not die?"

Still pale-faced in shock, she almost laughed. "You hold on."

She'd told him how she'd started riding Drogon, told him one night in the rocking hold of the ship after they'd made hard love near the end of the journey. She'd said she'd just climbed on in a moment of panic, and away they'd floated from a crowd of assassins.

If his lady _(my _Targaryen_ lady, born to fly, not like you, you fool bastard)_ could do this, then he could too.

He took a step onto the bony platform of Rhaegal's foot, bent his knees a bit to keep from falling on his arse, and stepped aboard the wingbone. Rhaegal clearly was new at this as well, and nearly pitched Jon off as the dragon jerked him towards his back. When the wing swung him close enough, Jon just flung himself, clumsy as a damned donkey, toward the dragon's spine. He flailed, barely missing the lethal spikes, and ended up flopped over the dragon's back like a spatchcocked fowl.

He heard a titter, and looked up to see Dany was scarcely holding back a laugh.

_Bloody great. Right dignified start for a dragonrider._

He wriggled himself around to straddle Rhaegal's thick green body and took a heaving breath to settle himself. It felt like playing horsey on a fat, downed tree trunk when he'd been a child, except that he was sitting on the second most lethal animal on the planet, big as a castle tower. The dragon's heat below him was astounding, like he was sitting on a living, breathing hearthstone.

"All right," he managed to say, "What now?"

"There are commands you could learn, in High Valyrian or the Common Tongue, but I hardly use them anymore. Instead, I feel Drogon, in my body and my thoughts, and I allow him to feel me. It's like riding a horse bareback, but with... an equal."

That, he understood. Ghost was his other half. Surely it could not be too different. Jon reached out and took a grip of the set of spikes that seemed the right distance away, and settled his mind, as he'd learned to do when he was first training his direwolf, so long ago. Rhaegal's presence, now that Jon was atop him, was vast in his mind. He could feel the dragon shimmering all around the edges of his consciousness, thrumming with eagerness and a fiery joy.

_Rhaegal knew him. Rheagal _loved _him._

Jon looked at his Dany through eyes suddenly half-teary, wanting to tell her, wanting to kiss her with gratitude at what she'd just given him, for _everything_ she'd given him. Then Rhaegal's muscles bunched beneath him, the world lurched, and the earth fell away in an explosion of wings.

* * *

As Rhaegal dove for the snow-covered ground, one last scream was torn from Jon's raw throat.

_We're going too fast, we're going to die, here comes my death again, Dany--_

Then Rhaegal braked with a boom of expanded wings, Jon was slammed against the green-black hide, and all was still.

Distantly, he could hear wingbeats overhead, but in the sudden silence that was his soul, he sensed impressions, saw flashes of images, and there were feelings almost as clear as words.

_"Mine? Together?" _the dragon thought, _"Man Jon like Mother.__Fly. Kill. Help safe. Love. Make Mother safe. Keep safe. Fly."_

_"Yes," _Jon thought at him, knowing somehow exactly what the dragon meant. He stroked the steaming scales with both hands. _"Now you are also my other half."_

_"Mother?"_ thought the dragon. _"Me? __Keep safe? __Love?"_

_"Yes,"_ thought Jon. _"I love you and your mother. I will protect you both with my life."_

A vast wash of feeling surged through him, thrilling him up to the eyes with satisfaction. Then Rhaegal shrieked with joy and raised his shoulder. Mind whirling, heart still hammering, Jon clumsily slid down to it, but his legs were too trembly to begin to balance properly, so he just sort of laid against Rhaegal's hide and bumped along as they went down. He stumbled to the frozen ground and barely managed to stand, until Rhaegal nudged him for strokes and he collapsed onto his arse in the snow. He managed to keep his arms on the dragon's snout to steady himself, and he could feel his new brother's love, and concern, and amusement. Then the sky darkened, and with a great _whumph_, Drogon landed beside them. 

Drogon gave a bird-like twitter to his brother, who answered with a happy scream. There was a whisper of wing flesh folding, then Dany was on the ground, running to them. When she touched him, he felt a sudden flurry of emotion and flashes of thought--along with the distinct signature of Rhaegal's fiery mind were others that were foreign and suffused with a different, equally fierce love. He shook his head to clear it and the two dragons backed away and then took off in a massive pulse of wings. He closed his eyes against the snow blasted up in the wind of their passing, and when he opened them, Dany was kneeling beside him. Her violet eyes were full of awe and love, and Jon realized dazedly that he was near weeping himself. She took his shaking hands.

"You did it, the two of you," she whispered. "You're a dragonrider."

Jon could barely gather words, so wrecked he was with terror and wonder. "He _asked for me, _he _wanted me." _He had to squeeze his eyes shut again to gather himself. He let out a long, shaky breath. "You did this for us, Dany." He pulled her cold, gloved hands to his lips and kissed them, eyes still closed. "Thank you. _Thank you."_

In the darkness behind his eyelids, he felt her take his jaw in her hand, draw him up, and press a slow kiss to his lips. It was the sweetest thing he'd ever felt, chilly and gentle and soaked in her love.

Slowly, he came back to himself, opened his eyes, and there she was still in the snow, patient as a stone and likely just as cold. Enough of that. He said, "I'm going to try to stand now. I make no promises I'll succeed."

She just shook her head, smiling wetly, and stood, offering him a hand up. Feeling like a silly git, he took it and allowed his tiny sweetheart to heave him up.

As he brushed his arse and legs off, she said thickly, "You know what this means for the war." Dark thoughts after all that joy, but the most important ones for now.

He nodded slowly, the realization sinking in. "Two riders, who can coordinate in battle and defend each other. Rhaegal with my protection and me with his. Me able to fly to where you are if you fall."

She nodded. "It will be a great advantage. And when we face Viserion--" she swallowed hard and looked away, eyes tight with pain.

He pulled her into his embrace and finished the sentence for her. "We'll be able to set him free together."

She sighed against his chest and just let him rock her for a bit. Then she sniffed and he saw her open her eyes and gaze past his arms. Wonder softened her face and she stepped away from him to stare about. Forty-foot walls of cascading water threw spindrift in clouds across the frozen bowl of the valley. The place was always stunning, but in the winter, when it added humped layers of icefalls, plus icicles long enough to spear giants, it was beyond all words.

"This is one of those surprises you were talking about, isn't it?" she asked, awed.

His pulse took off again like a slapped horse. He'd vaguely realized where they'd landed, but now it struck him. He'd somehow, beneath his knowing, had Rhaegal bring them _here, _the one place in his fool imaginings he'd thought worthy for him to say what he'd been burning with since they'd sailed. He said, "I'd wanted to show it to you. It's called the Valley of the Falls, but my father used to say it was the Great Sept of the North."

She shook her head wonderingly. "I've never imagined a place like this. I thought the North was all like Winterfell, or the frozen Wolfswood, or beyond the Wall. I've been in many temples, but this feels holier than them all." She looked at him with melancholy eyes. "For all the dark history between our families, I would very much have liked to have known your father."

Then, some comprehension came over her face and her eyes widened. "Jon," she said, "we know something about who your mother was, now."

He instantly guessed what she meant, and he'd thought much on it since he'd first touched Drogon. The rare ability to be tolerated by dragons was supposedly linked to blood, and he'd wondered, as he had when he was a boy and learned some new thing about himself, whether it was some clue as to who _she_ might have been, how his father had met her, whether she had ever cared about him, and all the rest. But as he became wrapped tighter and tighter into the little world he'd been forming with Dany, he'd realized he no longer really cared about some unknowable past. War or no, disapproving sisters or no, stations and bastardy and end of the world or no, he wanted to dream a future. He shook his head and said skeptically, "Maybe..."

"No," she interrupted, "we _do. _In all of history, only the blood of Old Valyria have ridden dragons. And since the Doom, not one person who was not a member of my family. She could have been born some distant relation through the Martells, or through girls of the Blackfyre bastards, even a Velaryon. The dragons know you are our family, Jon--"

He stopped her. "Or maybe," he said firmly, and took her by the hands, his own heart thudding in his chest, "they just know that I am meant to _become _your family."

She went stock still. Her bright eyes widened, she flushed, and he would have traded Longclaw to know what the great solemnity on her face meant. 

He had to speak it, now, whether it sent him to a lonely hell or not."Dany, to be your lover is the honor of my life. You know I have less than nothing to offer you--no riches or lands, or titles beyond what you allow me. I have a bastard's name that carries nothing but dishonor. My family is a thornbush and my people are worse. I've pulled you into a war that will strike us in days, and if we survive and you take the throne, you will be getting offers from every king and high lord from the Neck to Asshai. I should be damned for asking anything more of you, especially now, but I cannot go on without asking this."

He saw with a breaking heart that her eyes were filling and she was slowly shaking her head, a tiny _no, no, no. _

It took more courage to finish speaking his piece than it took to climb the Wall. He squared himself, as if to take a blow willingly, and said, "You have my heart. You have from the first. Will you take my hand as well?"

Then the tears spilled from her eyes, but it was because she'd tipped her head forward _nodding, _and the words that came from her mouth as she threw her arms around his neck were, _"Yes! My love, yes."_

He lifted her off the ground and spun her with a shout of joy. His heart was fully broken now, but what spilled out of the cracks was ecstasy. When they kissed, it was open-mouthed and clumsy with excitement, their teeth clicking together from smiling. The land itself seemed to sing around them, and from the sky came two dragonish shrieks of joy. When she finally loosed her grip on him to pull away and speak, it was with a broken voice, but she was stroking his hair and her eyes were filled with the love he'd looked for all his life.

"You were wrong. About so many things," she said, and he almost laughed, thinking of Ygritte.

"You offer me _yourself,_ which is--" and she looked up at the sky for a moment and then gulped back a sob--_"everything_. And this war, and your family, and your people, we will survive them all. And," she _laughed, _"for weeks now, I've hoped that the only offers I'd get after the war would be from fools."

He cocked his head like a puzzled hound at that.

Even through her tears, she smiled that infuriating, imperious smile that made him want to smack her arse. She explained, "After all, only a fool would make an offer to a betrothed woman, or worse yet, a married one." He felt so relieved he was trembly-legged again. _Inconceivably, she'd wanted him just as he'd wanted her._

"Jon Snow," she asked, gripping his cloak, "will you do me the great honor of taking me before your gods very soon, so that I can be your wife?"

Then he kissed her long and slow and deep, as thoroughly as a man could.


	2. Family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wherein smut happens, and so does family. Also, Tormund arrived early, because he is my dude.

When they finally got too cold and headed back to Winterfell, Dany somehow told the dragons to drop them back on the plain outside the Godswood, saving them the walk back from the dragons' nest. Northmen he barely knew crowded around as soon as the dragons took off, some taking hold of Jon's arm and demanding how in the Hells he came in on a dragon, others shouting, "The White Wolf is a dragonrider!" "King of the dragons!" or "Snow has conquered a dragon!"Dany looked bemused and a little troubled as they surged around him, but it was such a joy he just laughed and shook his head.

"Don't worry about how, just be glad I can," he told the more persistent questioners, and happily shoved them aside to make way for Dany to get through the crowd. Nothing could wreck his mood that day. He was a dragonrider, he was betrothed to Daenerys Targaryen, his men were shouting his name again, and he was home.

He pulled her inside the first door he could find, the castle bakery, and kissed her amidst the stifling heat and nose-tickling clouds of flour whilst old women gawked at them from the kneading tables.

He whispered against her mouth, "I can't decide if I should take you to bed or to tell my family first."

She laughed at him and tugged him almost off his feet in the direction of her rooms in the King's Tower. They jogged through half a dozen long corridors, boots tapping on the floors, until they waved off her guards and burst into her room. Jon shoved home the bolt on the door and turned to see her coat already on the floor and one of her boots thumped down by the hearth. She tossed off the other boot and came at him, tearing at the buckles on his gorget. He pulled her hands away to put them at his breeches laces instead, working the armorer's buckles with his practiced hands while enjoying her tongue in his mouth. He got the metal off his neck just as she took out his cock, and the clang of the gorget hitting the floor hid the first groan that rose from his throat. Her tiny hands were strong from gripping dragon spikes, and she worked his cock just how she'd learned he liked it--firm on the base with a little twist at the top, smoothing the bit of leaking fluid with her thumb. He felt shaky again for a new reason and went at the fasteners on her thick dress. It was one he'd taken off her a dozen times before so it was off her pretty tits and down about her waist in moments. He dropped to his knees and kissed the first place he could reach, the sensitive line of her ribs, then worked his way back up to her nipples, laving one, then the other like they were summer berries. She gasped and murmured above him as they hardened under his tongue, so sweet, his sweet, beloved woman.

While she was pulling at the thong that held his hair back, he worked her dress farther off while he kept his mouth busy. He went up the sensitive underside of one breast with his lips, breathing in her concentrated scent of woman and oranges and Essosi spices, and nipped over her collarbone until he got her skirt into a puddle around her feet. As her nails raked through his hair, making him want to purr like a fat housecat, he undid her breeches and smallclothes. He opened them like a nameday gift, and Gods, she was pretty, bare.

He got her clothes down around her ankles and brought one hand up to spread the petals of her sex. It was pink and swollen already, practically dripping with eagerness for him. He pressed his mouth hungrily to her folds, sliding his tongue through the sweet-salt of her honey right up to the place under her pearl that made her cry out. He could hardly hold himself back as she sang out, almost sobbing as he flicked his tongue. The headiness of her cunt, of her body heaving and shaking over him, made him moan, and he had to grip his cock to keep from coming right onto her fallen dress. His hard pressure took the edge off, and he was able to let go and slide that hand up between her firm thighs to stroke her. She whimpered and bent over him, gripping his hair just how he liked, and he slipped two fingers into her wetness.

The grip of her cunt was so hot and lovely that he had to add a third finger and thrust for his own dark enjoyment, pulling forward to smooth that rough patch at the front that made her keened loud enough to carry through stone walls. Panting, she yanked him up to pull him toward the bed. He was still in clothes, so he started tugging at his hauberk, getting the armored leather over his head, followed by the gambeson, tunic, and undershirt. She was full naked by then, and when he got his head clear of his clothes he moaned to see her putting her fingers where his mouth had been, rubbing firmly at her pearl and driving three fingers inside herself to make herself writhe.

When he finally got his shirt off, she growled as she sometimes did when she saw his scars, something so dragonish and protective in her that it made her eyes flash with anger and lust. She grabbed at him, and pulled him onto her, though he was still in his undone black breeches and boots.

"Isn't it disrespectful to fuck my newly betrothed with my pants still on?" he said, trying to finish undressing himself, but she shoved him hard to roll him over onto his back.

"It's disrespectful to keep your newly betrothed waiting to be fucked, my love," she said, and took hold of his cock to guide him into her. They moaned together as she found the dense muscles of her slit with the tip of his cock, and she slowly took him in. The fierce heat and pressure of her tight muscles enveloping him nearly whited out his vision, and all he could see was his queen, his beloved, his betrothed, glowing in the firelight. When he bottomed out inside her and her little body rested right on his hips, he reached with his thumb to her apex again to stroke her pearl again. She shuddered and rose up, her cunt stroking and gripping him from the inside, and circled her hips before driving herself back down on him. The push and grip on his cock made him arch against the bed, but he gripped her waist with his free hand and helped her along, reveling in the sight of her white body above him.

As she thrust and rode him, his pleasure spiraled higher and higher. He'd normally want to flip them over and try her a different way or three, to draw it out, but he was too close to the edge, his wonder and love driving him on. She seemed to understand, and panted and worked above him unashamedly, chanting filthy nonsense that made him shudder.

She leaned back to drive him into the front of her walls, and with his other hand, he felt her swollen little pearl pulse under his fingers just as she cried out and pulsed around his cock. The joy of seeing her coming apart with pleasuremade him come like a river inside her, shuddering and shouting beneath her.

His hard-working girl was panting and gasping as slid down over him to her elbows, where she kissed him long and deep. Their breath and hearts synchronized for a few perfect moments, then diverged, then synchronized again. She rested her sweaty forehead against his and laughed a little.

"What're you laughing about, betrothed?" he asked, feeling his eyes crinkle with happiness.

She nipped him on the neck and said, "Just that your men may love that you're now a dragonrider too, but I'm still the only one who rides the White Wolf."

He laughed so hard she bounced on his belly. He could feel his seed dripping out of her onto his pelvis, and rolled her over before it could completely ruin his trousers. She whinged as he pulled out of her, then hooked her little toes into the waist of his breeches, and pushed them down with her foot. He helped her along, got his boots off as well, and got under the coverlet with her, bare skin to bare skin.

"Is it terrible that I wish we never had to leave this room?" she sighed.

"Not terrible, though the world will come and get us whether we want it to or not."

She rubbed her cheek against his chest, and he gently combed his fingers through her silky hair. No matter what the world wanted of them, this moment would always be theirs.

He wasn't a man of words, but he had to say this: "From the day I joined the Night's Watch, I had hardly any happy moments. I had my brothers, especially Sam, and I had Ghost, but I was always struggling with some great trial or another, whether it was the cold, or a powerful man who hated me, or the threat of the wights. Even with Ygritte, I was always suffering over how I was living a lie to her, and liable to be killed at any moment if I were caught. With you, all my pain and fear fall away. The world is ending, but I'm not afraid at all while we're together. How do you make such magic?"

She nuzzled him under the jaw and said, "I don't know, but it must mean we're very alike, then, because you do the same for me."

She wouldn't like this, but he wanted so much to share his happiness. "Do you still feel the same when I say that I want to tell my family about us now?"

She groaned and shook her head against his skin. "The magic is gone, my love." Then she looked up at him and said, "Let's go tell them."

* * *

After he and his sweetheart fussed about and got each other clean and un-ravished looking, Jon sent a servant to ask his siblings to join them in the Lady of Winterfell's bower. He chose it because it was a private chamber that was easy for Bran to wheel about in, but in Jon's soul was a wicked pleasure in using Lady Catelyn's favorite place to tell his brother and sisters his news. The late Lady had enjoyed reminding them all when they'd played knights and ladies that Jon was forbidden to marry any highborn woman, and should never marry at all, to stop the stain of his line. Now he would sit his bastard arse on the woman's embroidered cushions and tell his true-born siblings he was marrying the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.

This would change everything for Daenerys, he knew. Family, the pack, meant everything to his sisters and brother. They had survived so much to return home and re-make their family--had made war for it, had sacrificed friends for it, had killed for it--and whatever their fears about being unjustly ruled by an outsider, those would surely fall away when Dany became one of them. They trusted him as their brother and Lord, and they would come to love her when she became their sister. Even Sansa would stop being so bloody suspicious when Daenerys' armies became _their_ armies.

Dany had been less than convinced when he assured her of this, because she didn't know Stark loyalty. She would see, and be happy, when their manner toward her warmed. She had never had sisters, only her snake of a brother, and to be embraced by good women would mean worlds to her.

As he led them all into the bright, firelit room to give them his life-changing news, he couldn't help but notice how radiant his queen was, all soft and glowing with the joy that filled him, too. And, if there was a worry line between her brows, it melted away every time she looked at him, and he would not worry along with her. 

They sat side by side on the fine, carved bench near the window, leaving his sisters to fill the big chairs and his brother to be rolled nearest the fire. Arya and Bran were wearing the flat, knowing expressions they'd taken on as adults, and Sansa looked like she was about to barter with a traveling medicine seller.

Arya immediately crossed her booted foot over her knee and asked, "Did you bring us here to tell us you've become a dragonrider? Because we already heard."

"Half the keep is still screaming about it," Sansa said, looking as unimpressed as possible, considering the subject.

He'd chuckled and ducked his head."Well, I didn't mean to frighten anyone. We knew you'd have heard about that, but yes, I rode Rhaegal, the green one, this morning, and I've bonded with him as Her Grace is to her other."

Sansa looked between them in that calculating way of hers. "This is good news for the war," she said, "but I must ask how someone who is no Targaryen bonded with a dragon."

He was privately dreading this question. It was one thing for Dany, with her own perspective, to talk on such things, but he wanted no question of incest to taint their betrothal.

"We don't know," he said. "I met the dragons in the South and I spent much time with them on the ride here. This morning I went with Her Grace to visit them. She mounted Drogon, and Rhaegal asked me to do the same."

Dany seemed to comprehend his reluctance to discuss his blood, and said, "Rhaegal was always closest to Viserion, the one who died, and especially mourns his brother. Though there are other explanations, it may be that Rhaegal wanted not to be alone anymore, especially in the fight to come."

Arya lit up more than he'd seen since their reunion, and leaned forward in her chair to ask eagerly. "So they feel things? And they understand what war is, and the future?"

Dany smiled. "All that and more. They share our minds, and each other's. They are not like people, but they are our equals. Jon said you would like to meet them. Is that so?"

When she gave a tight, eager little nod, her eyes bright as a squirrel's, he could finally see again his funny baby sister in that stranger's body.

All his nerves fell away and he took Dany's hand. As his siblings' eyes took in that gesture to varying effects, he said, "We have more news. We asked you to come here because we wanted to tell you first of anyone. I have asked Daenerys to marry me, and she has accepted me. We wish to kneel in the godswood in two days, after the last of the bannermen have gotten settled."

At their collective silence, Dany added uncomfortably, "We don't need a feast, or anyone but you and my advisors to witness. It will not interrupt preparations for the battle."

Bran remained silent and impossible to read, but the faintest smile rippled the still pond of Arya's face and she said nodded in something like approval.

Sansa saw that and glared at Arya. His tall sister was visibly gritting her teeth, and Jon could practically see the spite stoking up behind her leather bodice. He felt suddenly sick looking at her. That face was Lady Catelyn's all over again, catching him doing something above his station, telling all his friends what a blight he was on his father's honor.

She leveled her cold gaze on Dany and said, "This means Jon will be king. Will he rule, or just warm your bed?"

He flared hot as dragonfire at the stunning rudeness and barked, _"SANSA--"_

She startled backward, red-faced, and he had much and more to say to her, but seeing the Queen rise to her feet instantly silenced him.

She faced Sansa with an iciness only the Night King could rival and said, _"Thank you, _my future good-sister, for your warm congratulations. Since it is a love match, we thought we would share our joy before haggling the royal contract. For now, I will require you not to speak of _my future husband _as if he were a bed-slave, a condition that I know neither you nor I are in any position to despise." She looked at him and said, "Excuse me, I'm going to meet with the commanders of the armies I brought to save the North."

She stalked out of the room, and he was torn between chasing after her and laying into his wretched sister.

Instead, Bran interjected flatly, "Jon, I must tell you something, now."

He rounded on his crippled brother and snarled, "No, you can bloody wait. The lot of you have been awful to Daenerys since she arrived to save our arses. She has sacrificed a lifetime's worth of work and suffering to support our cause, and your ingratitude shames me. Arya, you didn't even show up to greet her, a queen, when she arrived in our home. Bran, you told her her dead child had been resurrected as a demon without a moment's sympathy to her pain. Sansa, you've been a right royal bitch to her from start to finish, and your behavior blackens our House. Whatever games you've been playing and strangers you've been learning to be, you are Starks. _She will be my wife_ and this behavior stops _now."_

He stormed out, slamming the door so hard behind him it shook in its frame.

Jon pounded down the corridor they'd arrived from, hoping to catch his future wife before she got too far. He was roiling in rage and shame, and he couldn't imagine how Dany was feeling at such treatment. He needed to make this up to her, he needed to make right with his infuriating family, and suddenly the familiar halls of Winterfell breathed out the same bitterness and frustration they had when he was a despised, motherless boy.

He found the makeshift war room empty, then backtracked to the King's Tower without finding her. He would apologize, he would beg her forgiveness, and he would find some way to make for her a path to his family. Dany would not reject him for what had happened, he knew, but it might harden her ruthless heart forever against his siblings, and he could not live with that. 

As he stalked through the halls, he could not help but remember a time when his father found him brooding after Sansa had snubbed him in front of the other children.

"Your sister is unkind sometimes," Father had said, "so you must be her example of what family should be." Jon had protested that he just wanted to be rid of her, as she would be rid of him. Father had looked at him hard and said, "You cannot rid yourself of your sister. She is part of you and you of her. When winter comes, the lone wolf dies while the pack survives, and winter_ is _coming. Make a way."

He had done his level best with her, and she had eventually come around, had she not? She had wept to see him at Castle Black when she turned to him for help, and she had apologized from her softened heart. There was great good in her, and he only had to connect that good to the good in Daenerys. They were much alike, his sister and his betrothed, both powerful, fearsome beauties who had crawled through blood to retake their homes. If he could get them cooperating instead of fighting like cats, they would be a mighty force.

As for Bran and Arya, they had been horribly changed by ordeals he had heard only hints of, but they would remember their manners if he had to nag them blue. He had been stabbed to death in a muddy yard and yanked, unwilling, back to life, and _he_ could still manage his usual rough courtesies. They must do the same.

He was about to start asking servants if they knew where the Queen was when he heard the harsh edge of Grey Worm's voice echoing from the corridor where Lords Tryion and Varys were housed. A door was open halfway down the hall, and when he came to it, he saw her commanders, her Bloodriders, her advisors, Tormund,and Ser Davos seated around a table covered in scattered scrolls. Dany had her back half to them as she threw back a goblet of wine at the windowsill. She grimaced at the taste of it and pushed away the cup as she saw him.

"This wine has gone to vinegar," she said to no one in particular, "and does not improve my mood." She read him wordlessly, looking sad and hurt and peevish to her bones, and her advisors all went silent and curious as he stood awkwardly in the door.

Finally, she broke the silence and said, "My Lord, I was just saying that I will not hear of this proposal that the Unsullied make their stand outside the firelines. We must find a substitute for the pitch we lack to make the trenches longer--dung, rock oil, kitchen grease, whatever we can find. At the least, Drogon and Rhaegal can help dig trenches further out. If we have to cut down the whole Wolfswood to fill those barriers, so be it."

She was telling him that she had not discussed the disastrous meeting with his siblings with her people yet. She would keep that private and save him the mortification. Relieved, he said, "The Wolfswood can be replanted. The Unsullied cannot. Do it."

Tyrion nodded tiredly. "And what of the Dothraki? Cavalry are always used to break up the first wave of enemy formations. I know you dislike the idea of sending them out as the vanguard, but _someone_ must be the van, and--"

"Does it matter that the enemy has no formations?" Ser Jorah asked. "Cavalry are best used to terrify and scatter. These enemies have no fear, and they will not scatter. They will roll over the Dothraki like a sea."

The Bloodriders seemed to snarl at this, and the discussion devolved into an argument over how best to thin out an army of shambling ghouls without sacrificing either the lives or the honor of the Horselords.

Dany circled the table to approach Jon, her face wreathed in unhappiness. She asked softly, "How is your loving family?"

He huffed a sigh and said, "No more loving than before. I shouted at them and came to find you. I am so sorry, Dany. They were not ready yet, though they will come to be, I swear it."

She looked him sadly. "You may be the most honorable man I've met, but your oaths on this matter don't inspire me. I won't plan on Sansa's good faith. As for the other two, I will make an effort." She didn't look like she was looking forward to it, but he appreciated her intentions.

"My father used to say that when winter comes, the lone wolf dies while the pack survives. Let us strengthen our pack." He took her hand. "Shall we tell our advisors?"

She looked up at him wide-eyed. "You still want to? Even though--"

His heart ached, knowing that his relations with his own blood would suffer if they went through with marrying, but he would not go on dishonoring the woman he loved, and risking fathering a bastard child, despite Dany's belief in her barrenness. His brother and sisters had not rejected him, they had simply been rude and lacking sense. He would be the bridge between them and Dany.

"Of course I do," he murmured. "I would never forsake you, not for anyone's happiness but our own."

She swallowed hard. "And if your sister turns on you for speaking for me, and turns the North against me after my armies are weakened by the war? What then? I know you will not forsake your family either."

"That will not happen," he said. "I am still Warden of the North, and you will win this war and be their queen. If we have to drag all the lords and ladies and smallfolk of the kingdom kicking and screaming into your new world, we'll do it." When he said the words, he could hear a weakness creeping into his tone. He had been killed once for trying to create a new world. He didn't want to be a second time.

She looked at him, troubled, but only nodded. She took his arm and said, "Shall we then?"

* * *

The advisors took the news of their troth better than he could've hoped. Tormund joined her bloodriders in making a ululating ruckus while throwing a batch of opened scrolls in the air, then he climbed over the table to get to them. He got to Jon first, grabbed him, beat him on the back, and shouted, "When I saw you screaming your lungs out on her dragon this morning, I knew she'd stolen you!" The he picked Dany up in a great smelly hug and rubbed her nose with his. He said to her, "You may be little, but you are fierce as a spearwife. If you have any complaints about him, don't cut his balls off before you come to me. I will teach him how to use that little prick to make you happy again!"

The Dothraki in their turn grinningly touched their foreheads at their Khaleesi, spoke a few words in their language, and gave his forearms a crushing grip and shake. Then, Missandei quietly crossed the room to embrace her queen deeply and whisper in her ear, and said shyly to Jon, "Your happiness is our happiness. Thank you for bringing us this joy."

Grey Worm knelt to his queen, then stood to take Jon's forearm. He smiled slightly and said, "Is blessing. You are worthy of each other."

Tyrion and Ser Davos meanwhile broke out a fresh flagon and sat grinning and congratulating each other while Varys smiled smugly between them. When the rest quieted down, they told the couple that that very morning they had proposed such a proposal, and were glad that the two of them had seen their uncommon wisdom. He and Dany had both laughed at that, and then Ser Jorah, as somber as a tomb, came around the table to lingeringly kiss Dany's hand and offer his own grasp to Jon. Jon did not like how Ser Jorah looked at Dany, had always felt a red rush of jealousy at what existed between them, but he could not deny the man's loyalty. Mormont was part of her pack, and now must be his as well.

The meeting was thrown well and truly off-track, and then it was time for supper in the great hall. Jon and Daenerys entered a bit late, and found the room humming like a hive with murmurs of the words "dragon," and "dragonrider" as they entered. Sansa's and Bran's places at the high table were empty. Arya had taken Sansa's place at Jon's right, and stood when he and the Daenerys reached the dais. His sister waited until they were seated, then walked behind them to stand between the Queen's chair and Lord Tyrion's.

She smiled pleasantly at a cautious-looking Dany, and said, "Your Grace, I apologize for not properly welcoming you to the family, and for my absence at your arrival. I've kept rough company of late. I hope you and Jon will be very happy. Will you forgive me?"

Jon felt as if the weight of all his armor had fallen from his shoulders. His favorite sister would do right by them, at least, and that would be a good beginning.

Dany's expression softened and a real smile lit her face. "Thank you," she said. "There is nothing to forgive. I would invite you to sit beside me tonight, but I know Jon would like you with him when we make the announcement."

"You honor me," Arya said, then gave a tiny bow, and went back to her seat.

Jon reached across the space between them to wrap his arm around his sister's shoulders and give her a squeeze. He knocked her head gently with his and said, "Thank you. That wasn't so hard, was it?"

She bumped him back and shook her head.

"Where are Bran and Sansa?" he whispered.

"I haven't seen them since this morning."

His heart panged. Then they had not heeded his command, and would be conspicuously absent during their announcement to the highborns. It would cause trouble, but at least he and Dany would not stand without a Stark beside him.

"You'll help me with them?" he asked his sister.

She leaned in with a little smirk. "If you give me a ride on your dragon."

That made him grin. She'd wanted a dragon since she was old enough to know what one was, despite the seeming impossibility of it. "Any time I can."

She grinned back at him, then, a real Arya Underfoot grin, and grabbed her empty mug. She raised one eyebrow at him.

He turned to Dany and asked, "Are you ready?"

Her eyes were bright and still happy from Arya's kindness, and she was so lovely in the candlelight that he could scarcely believe she was real, and his own. She took his hand under the table, held it tight, and nodded.

Arya caught the gesture and slammed her mug to the table, pounding it rhythmically until the lords all quieted and stared up at them with avid expectation.

He and his Dany stood together, and he looked out over his bannermen and hers. They were not all friendly, and not all were good men. Few were fools, though, and they must see the value of his alliance with a royal house, if nothing else.

"You all know that the North's greatest weapons in the war to come are our alliance with Queen Daenerys, and the Queen's dragons," he began. "When they came to rescue me and my men beyond the Wall, I saw each dragon kill nigh a hundred wights with a single breath of their fire. But a dragon is more vulnerable and less of a fighter without a rider. The Queen rides her black dragon, and together they are the most powerful warriors in the Seven Kingdoms. This morning, her second dragon took me as a rider, and will allow me to ride him in the war with the dead and always."

The highborns had likely all heard this news already, even if they hadn't seen his flight in person, but many still shouted, and a few stood and raised their swords. "King of the Dragons!" and "Dragonrider!" and "Dragon tamer!" filled the room. To see them rising up for him again, instead of against him, filled him with wary happiness. It was good, but Dany's next words could change everything.

At the back of the hall, a silent figure entered and stood against the wall, arms crossed. Sansa. She had come to hear them speak, but not to stand with them, it appeared. Seven Hells. If she spoke against them--

Dany raised her hand, and, blessedly, the nobles had enough sense to sit and go silent after a bit of rustling. She said, "This is momentous news indeed, and I welcomed it with all my heart. My dragons are my children and my equals, and would not have chosen him if he were not worthy. I came to know Lord Jon through sharing much work and hardship with him since he went to Dragonstone on the North's behalf. He has advised me in matters of both peace and war. He defended me bodily against the army of the dead, sacrificing his own rescue for the success of his mission and my safety. He also convinced me to change the course of my armies to join you, at great cost to my campaign to regain my kingdoms, and in exchange for his allegiance. My respect and esteem for him has only grown in that time. That is why, when he did me the great honor of asking for my hand in marriage today, I accepted him."

The faces in the room flashed to expressions of shock, disquiet, and in some cases, tentative approval. The hall grew loud with unintelligible talk, then louder still as some commotion rang out from the corridors on each side of the hall. With dread, he watched a tight-lipped Sansa uncross her arms and begin marching toward the high table, her eyes so hard they could have belonged to her mother. His pulse lurched as he realized the corridors were crowded with advancing, armored men, and his hand shot to Longclaw's pommel.

It was as if time slowed. Bodies were filling the doorways, Ironborn shouldering in to his right, Dothraki on the left, and from the back of the hall, a crowd of Wildlings flowed past Sansa. His vision went red and his body hot. In one motion, he pushed Arya and Dany behind him, then drew. Sansa had turned the troops against them, they were trapped against the hearth, he'd have to fight through dozens or hundreds, he had to get Dany and Arya out, Davos too, he was betrayed again, _betrayed, _they thought he was a traitor for marrying her, like Robb, _a traitor,_ he had to get her out of here, _traitor, _he should never have--

"THE KING AND QUEEN!" roared the leader of the Ironborn, lifting his axe--

but it wasn't an axe--

"KHALEESI MA SNOW KHAL!" bellowed the first Dothrak, brandishing a dagger--

but it wasn't--

"DRAGON KING!" yelled a familiar voice, and Tormund half-staggered his way to the front of the room, his horn of fermented goat's milk held high. "And the Dragon Queen, both of them too pretty for their own fucking good!" The redheaded Free man raised his arms high and cried, "Long may you boss around these kneelers!" 

A deafening cacophony of congratulations in two different tongues filled the room and Jon sagged with overwhelming relief. The men surging into the room from all sides were raising tankards and drinking horns, not weapons.

Sansa had been subsumed in the crowd. He would have to find her later and have it out with her. He went to sheathe Longclaw, but his hands were shaking hard enough that he had to steady the scabbard against the table. He felt a hand on his right shoulder and turned to see Dany looking at him with concern behind her carefully controlled expression.

"The Bloodriders told everybody who could understand their thick tongues," Tormund yelled, "and who were we to say common folk shouldn't say their blessings to you? We could all die tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that! Let's drink together and hope you have time to make some baby dragonriders to scare the shit out of the next generation's enemies!"

"We thank you," Dany called out, stepping forward, gracious and precious, and thank the Old Gods, safe and alive. "Lord Tyrion, have a barrel of Arbor Gold and another of the best ale brought from our supplies. All who have come shall drink the Westerland's finest."

The high table was surrounded by a laughing, drunken sea of warriors who came to the table in grinning groups to offer their congratulations. After the drink was brought in and cups filled, quite a few uncomfortable looking Northern lords picked their way through to congratulate them as well. It was obvious that some were offering only the most grudging of courtesies, but it was better than nothing.

Jon told himself that nothing was guaranteed, but there would likely be no mutiny tonight. Still, he did not feel at ease until he went to Dany's guards and asked that they double their watch as long as they were at Winterfell. Then, he could finally breathe, accept the raucous toasts they were offered, and drink with steady hands. He would marry his love, and if death took one or both of them in the war to come, they would have at least lived until they died.

They did not stay late. After the third course, Arya gave his shoulder a squeeze and left. Dany played her queenly role, smiling nicely at the toasts and sometimes even laughing at the bawdy jokes, all the while sitting up straighter than he ever had in his life. While tipsy troops and twitchy lords congratulated them, her fingers tangled with his under the trestle, his anchor in this storm. Then, when fruit in spiced honey was served, her little hand dragged his into her lap and pressed it through her skirts to the place where she burned hottest. He shoved back his chair right then and excused himself, knowing she would go soon to her own rooms, where he would find her.

The last few tankards of ale had caught up with him by the time the candle appeared in her bedchamber window, the signal that she was ready for him to come. Though she was known to be a widow, and war was screaming down upon them, she had to think to the future and not be seen as whorish by going to her chambers on his arm.

He gathered himself up, put Longclaw back on, and walked a little unsteadily through the servants' corridors to his woman's door. Her Dothraki guards, who normally only nodded, narrow-eyed, at him, when he came to her, for once grinned and thumped him on the shoulder as he went inside. He grinned back at them, though he reeled a little at their friendly blows. Her guards were bloody enormous.

She was sitting in nothing but a long, red silk dressing gown by the fire, unbraiding her hair. She fairly glowed in the firelight, and as she worked her fingers through the intricate style, she got softer and softer looking as it fell. He was tempted to go help her, as he often did, but tonight it felt lazily delicious just to watch her at it while he started on the buckles of his armor.

"You took a while," he said mildly, as he got his outer layers off and sat a little heavily in one of her chairs to take off his boots.

She looked at him, all amusement. "Are you drunk?"

He grinned and thunked a boot on the floor. "'Bit. There were a lot of toasts."

She unhooked the silver dragon clasp at the back of her hair, making her tits stand out as she raised her arms, and when she dropped them, that silk robe opened almost to her navel.

"There were a lot of well-wishers," she said. "Not all the ones I'd have liked, but Tormund did a very good thing, bringing in the troops to make it clear we had support. Ser Jorah gave him the suggestion."

"Ah, Ser Jorah," he said, and managed to get up and stand behind her in his bare feet, taking up her silky mane. Running it through his fingers was like letting cool stream water flow over his hands. He took over with the last braids, unwinding them one at a time from her temples. He could see right down the front of her robe, to where the skin was soft as moth wings. In just a few minutes, he'd kneel in front of her, as she'd asked for so many times, but to push aside the silk and kiss his way up between her thighs to her cunt. He'd spread her open, make her gasp and tremble until he was groaning with it himself, and then he'd take out his lucky cock and fuck her properly. He was hard just thinking about it.

He went on, jokingly, "Here you are talking of another man as I ready you for bed. Have you no regard for my delicate feelings?"

She huffed out a little laugh. "Considering that it's your delicate feelings I'm marrying, not his, yes." Then she looked curiously over her shoulder. "Are you jealous of him?" she asked, seeming surprised.

"No..." he said adamantly, and started on her last braid. The exotic scent of the oils she used on it was making him feel a little dizzy. He could just kneel at her feet right now... The braid slipped between his fingers like a pulled rope as she turned, intrigued at his tone. "A bit," he admitted.

"Like you're _a bit _drunk?"

"Aye." He looked owlishly at the braid, as if that could distract her from the track she was on. As if _anything _could distract her from a track she got on, stroppy queen. Mormont was a sore subject. "He's a good man who has your counsel and I would not deny you of--"

"I love him--"

He glowered and dropped her loosened hair as she stood up to face him.

"--but never the way he wants, and never the way I love you," she continued, putting her little hands on his tunic and giving him a push back toward her bed. He half-stumbled, but managed not to land on his duff. She strolled over to him, the robe billowing open to show her legs. Her commanding tone was making him so hard his breeches were like to burst open. 

She stood between his open knees and then climbed up to sit on his thighs. "I've never loved anyone or anything the way I love you," she continued, her eyes fierce and azure in the dark chamber. "Not ruling, or dreams of home, or even my dragons. Nothing." She tugged at the hem of his tunic and he eagerly dragged it over his head.

Then, because he was in his cups and had had a bad scare that night, he couldn't help asking as he pushed the edge of her dressing gown off the curve of her shoulder, revealing perfect white skin, "Not even your husband?"

Her eyes went sad as a tomb, and he deeply regretted that he'd asked.

"I'm sorry--" he started to say, but she shook her head.

"Drogo was a monster," she said, "and when he fell in love with me, he became _my_ monster. Though I loved him with all my heart, I would never choose him again, not in a thousand years. Not for me, and surely not to rule Westeros." Then she lay down over him to kiss his neck, making him arch up into the silkiness of her hot bare skin and her gown. "But you," she whispered into his ear, "I would choose every day for a thousand years."

"You are good," she said, kissing her way down his neck with each word, "and strong." She kissed him at the notch of his throat. "You have the noblest heart of any man I've known." She kissed him on the sternum. "You are so beautiful you take my breath away." Then she kissed him on the scar over his mangled heart. "And you are magic." She kissed him on each of the half-healed scars on his belly, saying, "You are so like me," and then she rose up over him to look at him with tear-shiny eyes. "And you are so different that I want to spend every day of the rest of my life learning who you are."

Her words made his lungs stall, so he grabbed her by the shoulders and drew her mouth to his so he could breathe again. To be loved so much was nigh unbearable. Her tongue slid smooth and slick against his, curling in deep, and made him groan with hunger. Being chosen, being wanted, by _her, _of all women--he would never get used to it, and he would never stop adoring her for it.

She whimpered into his open mouth and kissed him deep and thorough, like it was the last chance she'd get to do it. He cupped the delicate back of her neck, then slid his hands down her arms, pushing the robe down to her waist. She shrugged out of it as he stroked the velvety skin of her back, then as the robe whispered to the floor, he stroked her arse, and then reached between her legs to find her so wet she was dripping for him. She made a delicate hum, then he found her little pearl and circled it, and she made a feral sound better suited to Ghost. He lifted her thighs to urge her up the bed to kneel over his face. As she settled her lovely cunt in front of him, her warm musk damped his brain until he was just mouth and face and fingers, licking, stroking, sucking, pushing slowly inside her, then thrusting ungently with two, then three fingers as she shuddered and keened. He could feel her getting more swollen and delicious, wetter and tighter. He tapped with his tongue on her pearl while stretching her open, then stroked that rough little place on the front of her walls. She grew slicker, and trembled, then her breath sped up into a rhythmic pant, and she was writhing and crying out as she came.

Her hips were still thrusting in aftershocks against his fingers when he withdrew his hands and flipped her onto her back. He shucked his breeches and smalls in a desperate hurry, and then crawled up to her, thrusting her thighs apart with his knees. Her eyes were shining like hazy stars. He took his cock in hand, feeling himself hard as Valyrian steel, and thrust himself into her delicious cunt with a shocked sound from his own mouth.

He closed his eyes at the overwhelming pleasure of her cunt's sweet, hot grip, but she took his face in her hands and said fiercely, "See me, Jon. See who's fucking you. See who's _loving_ you."

He couldn't get close enough to her now, not even inside her, and he wrapped his arms around her back to hold her as close as humanly possible. She was warm and pulsing with life, strong and delicious around him. He pressed his cheek to hers, the wetness on their skin maybe sweat or tears, gasped, _"I love you,"_ and drove into her. His thrusts thrilled pleasure through every sinew in his body, and his every nerve was attuned to her cries and gasps. His stones drew up as the boiling heat gathered in his spine, but she was crying out and thrusting against him so eagerly he was sure she would come again. He tucked his hips down to catch the angle she liked best, and reached up for one rosy nipple, rolling it between his fingers. Her cries grew sharper, she tightened around him, and then they were both shaking and shouting together, the pleasure thundering through him, whiting out his brain.

When he came to his senses, she was in his arms still, stroking his back, undulating under him and murmuring his name. He thrust a few more times, making her gasp again, though this round was well and truly over. He kissed her, feeling like a swimmer in a welcoming summer river, floating along with nothing and no one holding him back. Her mouth was languid and slow beneath his. He felt himself beginning to soften, so he pulled out of her, and rolled onto his back beside her. She did as she always did and tucked herself under his shoulder, resting her delicate head on his chest, stroking his scarred body as if there was nothing at all wrong with him. He held her close, and though he knew he was a cad for it, let sleep take him.

* * *

The thin dawn pre-dawn light was what woke him. Dany left the shutters open when they coupled so that he would wake to go back to his rooms before anyone saw him, and this morning was like every other. They had turned in the night so that he was wrapped around her, and though he tried to get out of bed without waking her, when he moved his morning salute away from her arse, she griped a little and wriggled herself back against him. He was a bit sticky, and they hadn't the time for another round, anyway, so he persistently pulled away.

She grumbled more fiercely when his leaving the covers gave her bare hide a blast of cold air, and then she was awake. She blinked sleepily, licked her lips, then wrinkled her nose a bit. Head aching from last night's drink, he went to the pitcher and got her a cup of water, and one for himself to drink as he wiped down and got dressed.

She took it from him with a quiet, "Thank you," then asked, "When will I see you today?"

He shook his head. "As we can manage it. I've got to hunt down Sansa before breakfast and settle what I can with her before she gets questions in the great hall. Then I'll find Bran and do the same. I need to see to the final bannermen getting settled, and then we could go to the dragons together after lunch. I want to practice some of your fancy flying every day until the battle."

She nodded. "We'll practice together then. And I have some curious errands today. Ser Jorah told me that the young maester in training who cured his greyscale is here, somehow. He apparently abandoned the Citadel to fight the dead, if you can believe such bravery. Jorah would like me to meet him first thing, and see what use we can make of his excellent mind. And Tyrion has a plan to cause great damage to the wights with no risk to our troops. He wants me to come see the first test of it in the afternoon."

He looked at her with interest as he hunted around the furniture for his strewn clothes. _There _were his socks. "I'd like to be there for that."

She nodded and explained as he settled himself back into his armor, "It's a variation of the trick he used to wreck Stannis' fleet on Blackwater Bay. He wants to connect catapult shots together with flaming chains dipped in pitch. They'll use drums to coordinate the shots, and it should wipe out hundreds or thousands of wights at a time, since they march so close-packed. Ser Manderly and the Ironborn both brought many anchor chains to secure their long supply wayns together, and we're going to use those."

He said, "It may work. It would be better if we could use the dragons to wipe out the bulk of the dead before they even reach us. I know Bran can warg to scout out the Night King and his generals before they arrive. I'll see if he could use his crow flocks to signal us as well while we're in the air, to tell us safe positions to attack from."

She crossed her arms over her knees and leaned on them, looking forlorn. "I wish I could say I'll feel better with you in the air with me, but I'd give every copper star in my treasury to keep you and Rhaegal away from the Night King's spears."

Fully dressed, he crossed back to the bed and sat on its edge beside her. He kissed her forehead and rested his against it for a moment, just breathing in her comforting scent and warmth. "The sky is large and those spears are small," he rumbled. "We'll be safer together, and on the move."

She nodded reluctantly, and said, "I don't plan to become a widow a second time, Jon Snow."

He gave her a tiny smile and said, "I live you obey you, my Queen. I'll survive, if only for you." Then he got up, and went to seek out his sister.

* * *

He went to his own rooms, washed and dressed in clean clothes, then sent a servant to request an audience with Sansa. When the girl came back and said the Lady of Winterfell was ready for him, he went to her chambers and found her dressed and working, despite the early hour.

He tentatively took a seat and said to her, "I saw you come into the hall last night, but not speak."

She sneered, "Yes, any chance for someone who actually has stakes in the North to speak was taken up by the people who either destroyed our home or very well might again after the war."

His jaw hardened. This was already drifting badly off the mark. "The Ironborn are here through Theon, who I tolerate for your sake only. The Free Folk want to go back north the moment it's safe to do so, and the Dothraki and Unsullied will be my armies as much as Daenerys' by the end of the day tomorrow. Why are you so bent on seeing them as enemies?"

"Maybe because you're so intent on seeing them as friends that you can't see that they could destroy us with no effort the second the battle is over, or even before. Have you prepared _at all_ for that possibility?"

He knew she had the right intentions, to protect the North, including himself, but Seven Hells, she was frustrating. "I haven't, because I'm preparing for _this_ war, the one where we need every person who can hold dragonglass to fight. I can't lead them while making enemies of them. There has to be some trust!"

"No, _you_ have to have trust, because you can't be with _her _without it. _I _don't have the luxury of blinding myself to reality so I can wed a Southron ruler. Not again."

He took a deep breath, seeing her pain as if it were one of the beacons on the Wall. He needed to be kind to her so she could be kind to them. "Horrors happened to you when you went south, sister, and I'd die again to have spared you those things. But she's not Joffrey," he said. "Nor Cersei, nor Robert, nor her father. She's done great good in the lands she's conquered, and she'll do great good in Westeros. She might ask the North to change, but I promise you that they will be good changes."

"And what do you think those changes will be, Jon?" She clenched her long, pale hands and leaned over them. "Because I haven't heard a word about them, just that the other places she _changed_ are piled up with dead nobles who didn't go along with her plans."

He shifted uncomfortably. His pillow talk with Dany had included only a little of such things. He could only say, "She was ending slavery in those places. The people she killed are ones who would have been executed by the laws of Westeros as well."

"Well, we _don't _have slavery, but she intends to sweep us up into some grand vision anyway. _Our way is the old way, Jon._ For 8,000 years the Starks ruled the North. She has _no _right to us."

His head ached. Had his sister forgotten everything that had transpired over the past months? "She does, because the King in the North pledged to her, just as Torrhen Stark made a pledge, and I did it not because she was threatening us with dragonfire, but because she's come to save us with it."

_"You have a dragon now, too." _She stabbed one of her fingers onto her desk for emphasis._ "_You said yourself that it's yours now and always. You don't need her anymore, Jon. _We_ don't need her. Your infatuation with her will fade, or hers for you, and then you'll still be fighting her wars, with Northern men, instead of keeping our people and _your family_ alive through the winter. The North will wither and freeze and starve, unless after the war with the Night King you--" and she stopped abruptly. Wisely. Because she was going to say, in one set of words or another, "betray her and take back your crown."

He stood up, barely holding back his fury and his pain. He wanted to hug his loyal, treasonous sister, and scream at her, both. He made himself picture the desperate, weeping girl who'd thrown herself in his arms at Castle Black, and managed to restrain himself. He said lowly. "I will always protect you, Sansa, but never imply such a thing again. Talk to Arya, then speak to me when you come to your senses."

She looked away, and said in a quiet, unreadable tone, "I've already talked to Arya."

He stalked out to seek Bran.

It took far longer than he'd hoped to get to his brother, as he was delayed by a dozen small needs brought to him by nobles in the yard. Then, he had to meet with Lady Coldfield, Lord Wibberly, and a few other relative smallholders who had arrived with their exhausted looking people following behind. He paid them his respects, but the gentles among them looked at him frigidly.

"Word here is that you're marrying the Targaryen you knelt to," Lady Coldfield said. The old woman had a meine hard as nails and bitter as salt, and the people around her looked at her as if she'd been their leader on the road here.

"I am," he said, trying to be patient with what he knew was coming. "She's a good woman, a good queen, and she brought two armies and two dragons to our aid."

The lady worked her mouth as if preparing to spit at his feet. "Your grandfather and uncle must be spinnin' in their crypts," she said. "The North remembers."

"At least some of the North," said one of the others, a scrawny young man in ill-fitting armor who was probably Lord Littletree. "Perhaps not its bastards, once made kings or no."

He clenched his teeth before he could say something he'd regret, then waved over White Tick, the Unsullied captain who was organizing the camps. He said, "These folk have just arrived. Please settle them," and simply walked away. He had no appetite, but made himself get a bowl of stew from the serving line in the yard to steady his mood.

It was nearing noon when a servant located Bran in the Godswood for him, and she said that his brother was accompanied by a fat fellow she'd seen lurking about the past few days. That perked him up--could the maester in training Dany had been talking about possibly be Sam? Unlikely, since Sam surely would have sought him out first thing.

He hurried to the Godswood, though, and broke into a jog toward the heart tree when he recognized his best friend sitting in stillness with his brother under the bone-white branches, holding a small book. Sam looked up at the crunching of leaves and snow under his feet, and from his miserable face Jon knew something terrible had happened. Sam lurched to standing, and Jon grabbed his Brother in an embrace.

He looked Sam over carefully and said, "I don't know what you're doing here, but I'm so glad to see you. What's happened? Where's Gilly and Little Sam?"

Sam said carefully, "They're fine. They're in our room beside the library."

"What's wrong, then?"

Sam's little mouth wobbled, and his eyes flushed with what looked to be tears of anger and misery. "I just spoke to Daenerys. About my father and brother. Did you know, Jon?"

Jon shook his head wordlessly, dreading what was about to come next. Randyll Tarly was a military commander, for Cersei, and their estate was near Highgarden.

"She burned them alive, Jon, the both of them. They were her prisoners."

It was a blow, and impossible not to think of the dozens of times he'd heard the story of his grandfather being burned alive by Aerys. The man had screamed and writhed, boiling in his armor, while Uncle Brandon strangled himself to death trying to save his father. The mad king had looked on, cackling, while the men died. Jon knew the dragons, Targaryens and their beasts alike, would burn living men in war, or in madness. To see Sam so miserable, and to know Dany had caused it, was like being stabbed in his already aching heart. All he could manage was, "I'm so sorry. We need to end this war."

"Would you have done it?" Sam begged to know.

That took him aback. It was wartime, Sam's father and brother had been combatants. He said, "I've executed men for disobeying me."

"But you've also spared men, thousands of Wildlings who wouldn't kneel."

"I wasn't a king, and they weren't--"

"But you _were_, Jon," Sam interrupted fiercely. "You've always been. That is why I came here."

He'd had it with talk of his bloody crown. "I'm _not_ the King in the North anymore, Sam. That's over with."

"He doesn't mean King in the North," Bran said quietly. "Sam, give him the book."

Sam, red-faced with emotion, held out to him the book he'd been carrying, opened to a page near the end. It was closely written with an old person's spiky scrawl.

"What is this?" he asked, wary.

"I... we, that is, Gilly and I, we found this in the Citadel. I was tasked with copying some old books, and this is the diary of the High Septon Maynard. He was High Septon during Robert's Rebellion. I came all the way here to tell you about it."

"What does it have to do with me?"

Bran said tonelessly, "Everything. Who you are. Who your mother is."

Jon went still. He had waited his whole life to hear these words, and never thought they would or could become anyone but Ned Stark. He'd thought the secret of his mother, who she was, whether she had ever loved him or cared about him, whether she was alive or dead, was gone forever with his father's life.

"Sit with us," Sam said.

He sat on one of the wide roots of the tree as Sam lowered himself awkwardly back down nearby, and he looked at the open page before him.

_"Today, I do not know whether I have done a great service to the world, or destroyed a kingdom. Prince Rhaegar, who has come to me so many times with his thoughts on prophecy and fate, came again to me in the night, most impassioned. He ordered me to write papers of annulment to end his marriage to her Royal Highness Princess Ellia, and then to meet him at dawn beneath the great oak where we like to converse beside the river. I did as he commanded, and when I arrived at the river, he had with him Lady Lyanna Stark, the daughter of the Warden of the North. How she came to be here, I do not know. She was with child, though, barely rounded, and as radiantly happy as a peasant girl with her true love. The melancholy Prince, I have never seen him so joyous. I bound their hands and performed the ceremony, which was witnessed by Ser Arthur Dayne, Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, as well as the Kingsguards Ser Gerold Hightower and Ser Oswald Whent._

_"Rhaegar told me they would be riding out together to Dorne. He said also that he is sure that the child the Lady Lyanna carries is the Prince Who Was Promised, the third of the three dragons of prophecy, and he who would deliver us all from the Long Night to come._

_"I only hope that he is right. Such events must birth chaos, but perhaps, in the end, fire and ice come together may save us all..."_

He went cold, and there was a roaring in his ears.

Far in the distance, he heard Bran say. "I looked. You are their child. You were born Aegon Targaryen, Sixth of His Name. You are the heir to the Iron Throne."

He stood, the book falling into the snow. He took two strides, bent over, and gripped great handfuls of his own hair to stop the world spinning. The implications--

All these _years--_

_Father--_

When he could stand upright, he spun around to look at them and ground out incredulously, "Father--Ned Stark--he lied to me my whole life. _He said I was a bastard,_ my whole life."

"To protect you!" Sam said. "Robert Baratheon would've killed you in your cradle if he'd had a hint of what you were."

Stark could've hidden it from others, but it was wrong in every way that he'd never told him. That he--

He said in a horror of realization, "He let me go to the Night's Watch, to rot and die at the Wall, without knowing. Without knowing I could've been _king." _

"For the same reason Aemon Targaryen went," Bran intoned. "So no one could try to use you, or claim you were any threat to Robert."

His mind went black. "Any threat to his fucking friend," Jon barked, "the drunken whoremonger who ran the kingdom to ruin."

"Well," said Sam, "I don't really think your, um, Lord Stark really knew what Robert was--"

"Did anyone know that my mother went with Rhaegar willingly?" Jon interrupted.

"Yes," Bran said. "She sent ravens to Robert and to Grandfather. Robert knew and told no one. The raven she sent to grandfather was taken by a hawk on the way here."

"So tens of thousands of men died, including my real father, for my parents' love, and for Robert Baratheon's pride," Jon said, aghast.

The two men before him said nothing.

Finally, Sam said, "You must also think about the... issue... of Queen Daenerys."

"The claim doesn't matter if I'm marrying her--" he started to say, and then stopped.

The world stopped.

_No._

_NO._

"She's your aunt, Jon. It's an abomination, to both gods and man," said Sam.

In the distance, he heard Rhaegal scream. He could feel the dragon take flight, coming for him. He could not think, he could not speak. He walked, then ran, toward the gate of the godswood, burst through it, and then out the Hunter's Gate and toward the barren land that was once the edge of the Wolfswood.

A vast shadow descended on him, then Rhaegal landed in front of him with an earthshaking thud. The dragon bellowed in distress, feeling Jon's pain as acutely as if it were his own, and dropped his shoulder. Filled with blackness, Jon climbed aboard, managing to get in place with little struggle. They took off with a massive surge of wing and muscle, and then they were in the air. He had no idea where they were going.


	3. Battle and Wounds

When Robb found out that Ned Stark had died, it's said, the Young Wolf left his war camp and ruined his sword against a tree. Here, deep in the frozen moors west of Winterfell, there were no good trees to wreck Longclaw on, even if Jon could bear to lose one more precious thing.

Instead, he paced, screamed, threw stones and ice, and slammed his fist against the few lonely saplings, damaging only his gloves and knuckles in the process. Rhaegal had dropped him off in the loneliest possible place, then paced around out of his range, whipping his tail and whining in uneasiness at Jon's fury.

In one conversation, so much had been stolen from him. _His father--_neither his father nor an honorable man, nor trustworthy with the most profound information of Jon's life. _His childhood--_full of longing and unworthiness, full of Catelyn Stark's hatred and Sansa's petty disdain, a stain on an ancient House's honor and his father's marriage, and the brunt of sneering jokes--it was all a trade for Robert Baratheon's disastrous rule. _His name_\--his _bastard _name, branding him in all company as the untrustworthy fruit of lewdness and dishonor--that was pure illusion that Stark had made real. _His mother--_a tragic legend who'd abandoned family, betrothed, and honor to run off with a married man. _Rhaegar Targaryen-_-a mystic and an honorless fool, perhaps, but a legendary swordsman, a gentle man, a scholar, a musician, a crown prince--discovered and killed in the space of a thought.

And Dany. _Dany._

_Maester Lewin is teaching him, Robb, and Theon their lessons. "The Targaryens committed the great sin of incest. Such a thing is an abomination to both gods and man that produces monstrous children. It caused the downfall of their ancient House. It created madness--cruelty and madness that devoured many good people along with the madmen themselves. Including your grandfather and your uncle Brandon."_

_The minstrel is singing "Ash of the Dragons" about the Doom of Valyria, an entire kingdom cursed by the gods for the abomination of marrying blood to blood._

_He's half-listening as the Septon propounds in his sermon that gluttony and avarice are sins, but of a lower level than the greatest sins--murder, rape, and incest._

_Craster's Keep, stinking of unwashed bodies and women's despair, where all the daughters were wives._

He had been fucking his _aunt._

He had proposed to _marry_ his aunt.

And that aunt was Dany, his Dany, who he loved in ways he had not dreamed possible, who loved him beyond all he had previously imagined. In the dripping gore that was his heart, he wanted to slash and kill everything and everyone that would take her from him, but that must include himself now.

He must end it with her. He must wreck her heart, to match his.

This knowledge left him sitting on his knees in the snow, head in hands. Rhaegal crept close, as quietly as such a mammoth creature could, and wrapped a wing around him like a tent. The beast moaned along with him, a comforting, vibrating note that soothed Jon down to his bones.

He had gained Rhaegal from all this, the mystery of their bond solved. It was a mighty gift.

And then there was the Iron Throne.

He did not want it.

He had never wanted to command, only to have purpose, and honor, and though he thought it only a dream for him, some love.

_You could have those things if you took the throne, _Sansa's voice in his head whispered. _You could protect us all._

He did not want it.

_You don't know _what _you want, _whispered Sam's voice. _You don't know yourself at all. You were lied to your whole life. You were born to be a king._

He did not want it.

_Glory, respect, the admiration of men and the adoration of women, _whispered Robb's voice in his head. _I broke my vow, but you would not. You could lead us back to justice, and glory._

He _could_ not want it.

_House Targaryen would not die, _whispered Dany's voice. _I am barren but you are not. Your children would be princes and princesses of the realm._

It would be _wrong_ to want it.

Yes, _even if_ he did, it would be wrong.

He would have to somehow convince Daenerys to give up her lifelong campaign to rule, the one ambition that had kept her alive and functioning in her long nightmare of a life. If he somehow could, what would happen to her? His followers would want her eliminated. Banished back to Essos, where he would never see her again, or contained in some out-of-the-way keep in Westeros as a princess with no court, or.... No. He knew what happened to people with ambition and a claim to the throne. Assassinated, or rising up.

Daenerys Stormborn would never give up her claim.

Then he would never want it.

This decision alone gave him a dram of peace. The rest of his thinking had made his head ache even more, along with the cold and the shouting and the weeping like a beaten stableboy. He crawled backwards through the snow a bit to Rhaegal's side and leaned against him. The dragon's heat soaked into him like the water of a hotspring, easing his pains of both body and soul. Without the focus and newness of riding, his mind relaxed and he felt again Rhaegal's mind pushing up against him. He let it wash over and around him. There was deep worry for him, and a desire to help him, with heat, with protection, with food. At that, Rhaegal pushed the savory, burnt-hair-tinged flavors of roasted carcasses into his mind--sheep, goat, horse, deer, elk, even man. Jon shuddered and gagged, letting the dragon sense _no_, he was not hungry now, and would _never_ be hungry for man.

_Fire?_

Jon saw, as clear as a painting, Rhaegal and his brothers washing their mother in fire to save her from someone who'd put them in chains. In the green-tinged memory, a man with purple lips writhed in front of Daenerys and shrieked as he melted like candle wax.

_No, I would burn, I don't want fire--_

_Want Mother, _the dragon thought confidently.

_No! _he shouted with his mind, and smacked his head back on Rhaegal's impenetrable scales.

This deeply puzzled Rhaegal. _Not? Mother? Not? Jon want _Mother.

Anything_ else, _he thought, staring 

_Then kill._

Rhaegal pushed to him the rotten stench of the wights, their endless numbers so temptingly clumped together beyond the Wall, and the scream of his beloved brother as he plummeted to the ice in a comet-tail of blood and agony. In the snowy valley, his grief and Jon's, and his rage and Jon's, began folding together like hammered steel until they were one. They could go _now,_ alone, Jon realized, and destroy thousands of the monsters before the army of the dead even neared Winterfell. Hazy-headed with relief for the distraction, Jon scrambled up Rhaegal's leg like it was a tree trunk, seated himself, and urged them into the frigid air.

Rhaegal pumped his wings hard, thrusting away the pitiful world where Jon was a creature of the ground. Relief flowing through them both as grief and helpless rage burned away to leave pure, molten ferocity. The land grew small, and smaller, until it was practically nothing, trees and farms just scattered toys, unthreateningly far away. They flew northeast, avoiding Winterfell and following the road north toward Last Hearth, where Bran had last spotted the wights on the march. The further they flew, the angrier they became, and Jon felt his mind melt into Rhaegal's. He was himself, but subsumed in fire, vast of wing and speed. Everything was below Rhaegal except Jon, who was his father, his brother, his equal, his companion. Everything could be torched except Jon. Fear was below them. Grief could burn.

In the timelessness of Rheagal's mind, the flight of hours might've taken minutes for all Jon cared. The white blanket of the frozen world rolled below them, cut and slashed here and there with dun cliffs and black waters, but otherwise nearly featureless at their height. It wasn't until the dragon's superior eyes spotted the murky smear of grey that was the marching dead that Jon remembered that they would need to keep a weather eye out for the Night King and his spears. For a moment, he was startled out of the green-flame haze that was their shared mind, shocked he'd forgotten that. He had planned to ask Bran to use his birds to find the Night King and any other threats, and to signal with those same birds during battle. Now he'd have to rely on watchfulness, and he wasn't feeling watchful. He was feeling deadly.

He pulled Rhaegal up above the clouds again, to make them hard to spot from the ground, and at the steep climb, Jon had a moment of pure terror as he started sliding, uncontrolled, off the dragon's back before his boot toes found a gap between scales to dig into. This wouldn't be like the two fast but relatively flat flights he'd done alongside Danaerys. This would be war.

_Her laughing, wondering voice, "You hold on--"_

He blocked out such thoughts and bared his teeth. They must've been almost overtop the blue-eyed army now, and he sent Rhaegal skimming below the clouds to scout.

_Yes. _

He saw that there were thousands more now of the dead than there had been beyond the Wall. They must have recruited every lichyard and forgotten corpse in the deep North on their way. On their edges and every so often throughout the mass rode blue figures, the sneering pale fuckers he could shatter with his sword. He suddenly desperately wanted to see if they'd burn as well.

They didn't spot the Night King, but they weren't close enough to tell one frozen shit from another. It didn't matter. Jon would be the eyes, Rhaegal the burning blade.

They dove so fast and hard that Jon floated slightly off Rhaegal's back, and a scream went to tear itself from their throat. It came out a battle roar instead. The air was so frigid above the mass of the army that Jon's eyes burned and blurred and his hair went stiff with ice. Then Rhaegal's body was heating, hotter, raging hot, burning through Jon's clothes and into his body. They swooped low and loosed their fire, carving a river of flame through the evil below them.

Jon looked down and saw that hundreds had fallen, perhaps a thousand. There was some kind of sound, and the mass started to spread out, like ants scattering before a torch. It confused his hunting vision, already swimming, and he almost missed the tiny, sharp motion to their left, the Night King's javelin arm whipping forward. He banked Rhaegal hard to the right, rolling them down through the air and turning his own seat into a vertical slide. He gripped with every muscle in his body, desperately trying to not fall all the way off, and saw the spear float past, some ten feet above their neck.

Their triumph was immense. They knew where the Night King was now. They could _hunt._

They banked back upright and Rhaegal shrieked and roared, spewing flame down onto the mass of wights while surging northwest. They would see who burned now.

Another breath of flame exploded the dead below them, making pyres of out of the fallen that blew outward and lit up those still marching. Rhaegal spotted the Night King taking up another javelin and Jon steadied them until he saw that deadly arm jab forward. The spear was flying low this time. They couldn't drop away from it, so Rhaegal pulsed his wings hard to carry them up. They flung fire at it when it passed under their belly, but the blade flew on unchanged. They snarled in frustration, and poured more inferno. They glanced down and saw that the Walkers all seemed immune to their fires as well, though their dead horses were torched and the generals were left staggering on the burning ground.

Jon and Rhaegal banked to surge towards the Night King, thinking with one seething mind to swoop down upon him and crush him in their claws. The ancient monster took another ice spear from his second and readied himself to take another shot they'd easily avoid. Rhaegal breathed a path of fire on the way down toward the king, lighting up the earth, which at this range was making an unholy burning stench. Jon flared his nostrils to cut it out and then they were ready. The Night King, he could already see, was aiming for their belly again. He'd throw, they'd rise above it, and then they'd dive down and crush him while he was weaponless. They'd rip and tear, and then maybe see how demon tasted.

The Night King didn't even try to move out of their path. The only sound was the steady pulse of Rhaegal's wingbeats as the Night King took aim, steadied his arm, and then launched, heedless of his obvious mistake. One beat of wings, then another as the missile flew, then an _off_ fluttering sound distracted their mind. On pure instinct, they collapsed their left wing and fell like a flung stone to that side. Jon was dragged off toward doom by gravity, losing all connection except through his desperately gripping hands, and the spear cut a yard-long gash through their open right wing, just as a wall of blue fire thundered down onto Rhaegal's head from above. 

_Viserion._

Rhaegal slammed upright to make a seat again for Jon as the backwash of the fire poured down his neck and onto Jon's hands. The torn leather of Jon's gauntlets shriveled over his ripped flesh as he jerked away from the flame. The blue fire wasn't hot, but like salt poured into a wound, freezing and searing at the same time. It burned Rhaegal's eyes and mouth, and he screamed and writhed in the air. Jon was nearly shaken from his seat, and his uncontrolled sliding confused Rhaegal, so that he didn't know where to go or how to escape. A vast claw swept down and caught Jon's cloak, yanking his body right off Rhaegal's back, the strength of the leather straps almost defeating the strength of Jon's grip on Rhaegal's spikes. Jon grunted and held on for his literal life, cloth ripped, Jon fell back into place, and the dead Viserion shrieked when he realized that the furred hem he carried away was not Jon's body.

Bloodlust still burning, Jon and Rhaegal dove straight for the Night King again while Viserion was distracted, but another javelin flew into their path, clipping a membrane on Rhaegal's neck and flinging hot dragon blood onto Jon's now-naked hands. _That _burned like acid, and he screamed. They needed to kill that fucker, but they couldn't fight two enemies at once, Jon barely holding on, _what would Drogon do, _he might as well die to kill the demon, _what would Mother do, _oh Dany, _Mother would flee, flee. _

Jon looked up in time to see Viserion's rotted mouth glowing blue above him, so he hauled Rhaegal to the right. That was their injured side, though, so they were slow. Viserion's fire scorched their claws and scaled legs, making them flinch and waver in the air, but the dead dragon didn't pursue them as they swooped away. Jon raised his stinging eyes to the wight dragon and realized that Viserion's wings were tattered, barely keeping him stable in the air. He'd been hovering above them only, not even trying to claw and bite because he could likely barely maneuver.

Jon remembered from training with the Unsullied how they used their whole bodies to drive their spears, and if they dealt with an enemy above them on steep terrain, they struggled to recruit enough muscle to thrust well. Jon and Rhaegal were almost above the Night King now, and Jon sent them straight down on his head. The demon pulled out another spear, but they weren't going to snatch at him. Instead, they skimmed barely a dozen feet over his head. As Jon had hoped, Viserion wouldn't blast his own maker, so they had a moment to pour everything they had into their speed. Rhaegal's torn wing ached and screamed, ripping further, but they were able to glide flat out, like a hunting falcon, to put their pursuer far behind them. Jon watched behind him as another spear flew, and in the heartbeat before it arrived, they pulled hard upward and to the right, letting it sail harmlessly below.

With his whole being, he urged Rhaegal north, where the dead would have to reverse their march to pursue them. Viserion sent out one last blast of freezing flame after them, but they were too far away for it to be any threat, and the slow, dead dragon made no more pursuit.

They flew for leagues, nearly to the Gift, then wheeled back around, far to the west, to return home. At some point, they must've passed the army of the dead, because the air currents took on a faint fug of death, but the rider and his dragon stayed hidden above the clouds.

The sun was dropping low when they spotted the Last River, and Jon directed them down to land beside it. They hit the earth with a bone-shaking thud, and Rhaegal offered Jon his left wing to ride down. They were both panting from exertion, and Jon stroked Rhaegal's head and murmured to him like he would a frightened horse. The dragon was as exhausted and horrified as he was, but took comfort in Jon's affection. His immense heart, which Jon realized he could likely tuck himself inside of, gradually slowed, until it beat again with the slow, thunderous cadence of a royal funeral march.

They walked together to the ice-rimmed river. Rhaegal waded right out into black water and thrust his jaw into a deep current to drink. Jon knelt on the bank, peeled off what was left of his gloves, and thrust his bleeding, burning hands into the riffles. The relief of getting the remaining dragon blood off him was immediate, though the wounds it left behind were ugly and would need to be dressed.

_Seven Hells,_ he realized. _I've damaged my hands before the battle. Father would have much and more to say--_

It all came back to him.  
  
The skirmish, which had obliterated his grief for a short while, was over. He would soon be going home to people who must've been frantic at his absence. He would have to explain himself, somehow, though he knew not what he'd say. Their petulant little scrap had cost the Night King an iota of his troops, plus Rhaegal his maneuverability and him wounds on both his sword hand and shield hand.

And he would have to face Dany. Their wedding was scheduled for tomorrow morning, and the woman he loved must be told to her face tonight or jilted at the godswood like a bartered bride who'd proven ugly under her veil. 

Under the fading sunlight, he rubbed the armor over his scarred chest and wondered why everything good turned to ash at his touch.

Rhaegal sloshed out of the river, looked sharply off into the forest to the west, and heaved a short burst of flame. Jon saw that his friend had caught a herd of deer unawares, and was going to make his supper of them. Jon cupped his stinging hands in the water, drank deep, and then sat down on the riverbank. He needed to make a plan.


	4. Broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Flight, landing, and the conversation Jon dreads

It was past dark when Drogon found them in the air. They'd been flying sluggishly, Rhaegal heavily favoring his injured wing and wincing against the turbulent air's pressure on his scorched face and body. Jon was exhausted from the day, and lay almost flat on Rhaegal's back, closing his eyes against the frigid blast and occasionally lifting his head to try read the darkened land for the route back to Winterfell. Whenever he did, Rhaegal would push to him a mostly incomprehensible sense impression of scents, stars, and the pull of his mother and brother, his reassurance that they were not lost. Then, Jon felt the dim glow of Drogon's presence--nothing like the bonfire in his mind that was Rhaegal, but one that filtered through Rhaegal to himself, like light traveling through water.

When the enormous outline of Drogon crossed in front of a moonlit cloud ahead of them, sharp-edged and black as a parchment shadow-puppet, Jon wondered if Dany had sent him, and felt his innards churn again with guilt and dread. Nothing that he'd face after they landed would be easy. The red-black dragon coughed a booming greeting, which Rhaegal returned with a screech that vibrated all through Jon's legs and crotch. Then, Drogon wheeled around and slowed to draw alongside them. When the great reptile came abreast of them, Drogon turned to stare at Jon with a long, searching look before pulling back ahead and leading Rhaegal toward a sprinkling of pinprick lights in the distance.

The scale of objects from the air still confused Jon, and he wondered to see this little bundle of lights grow from the size of his palm to the size of a platter, then to a table, and then to take on the dimly recognizable shape of Winterfell at night, with layers of torchlight and candlelight shining from towers and halls. Eventually, he saw a fairy-ring-like circle of torches separate itself from the rest, at what must've been the dragon's nest.

The circle of torches around the dragon's nest became clearer, and Jon saw a long string of goats milling and bleating in one corner of it, likely left as a lure for Rhaegal. Rhaegal, already hungry again, put on some speed, and then both dragons spread their wings simultaneously, like a pair of court dancers, to begin the rapid glide down to land. Jon braced as the dragons narrowed their wings and fell toward earth like meteors when their meal began panicking at their approach. The pain in Rheagal's injured wing and belly burned sympathetically as distant, deep aches in Jon's body, and Jon desperately tried to push caution at his dragon through the cauldron of the dragon's hunting-mind. Rhaegal was too fired up, though, and braked hard to try to land just beside the goats. The sharp billow of air into his wings tore his slash wound more, and their flinch yanked them off-center. They whipped to the left, and Jon screamed as he was flung off Rhaegal, his legs and body spinning out like a thrown bit of leather, stopped only by his right hand's grip on its spike. They clumsily struck the earth, Jon dangling by one hand, Rhaegal trumpeting in pain. 

As soon as Rhaegal was on the ground, he thrust his wingbone under Jon's scrabbling feet and brought him gently down. Jon was shaking as Drogon lumbered up to nose at them both, snorting at Rhaegal's wounds and moaning some private conversation with his brother. Jon caught his breath, made his exhausted goodbyes to them, and stumbled toward the castle.

He paused, heart in his throat, when he saw a pale glow moving through the guardhouse gates in front of him. It was Dany, running towards him in the darkness, white as a specter in her furs and Ghost at her heels. When her face became readable in the torchlight, he saw that she looked desperate with relief and worry, and didn't slow before she reached him.

She was on him before he could stop her, throwing herself at him, her arms tight around his neck, saying "Thank the _Gods,_ my love, _Jon, _where did you go, thank _Gods--"_

Her endlessly comforting scent and softness and warmth exploded around him after the hours in the sere air on Rhaegal's stony back. He couldn't help but crush her to him and bury his nose in her hair, though it burned him down to his marrow to know it was the last time. He breathed her in deep, listened to the love words she whispered in his ear, relished her for a few final, excruciating seconds, then set her down.

She looked at his battered appearance with her frightened heart in her eyes and said, "What happened to you? Why did you fly away without me?"

So focused he'd been on her, he hadn't noticed the train of guards that had followed her out to make sure all was well. As the men took up positions near them, Jon just shook his head and said, "We must talk. Go to your rooms. Wait for me. Please. I will come as soon as I can."

She looked at him, face full of fear. She saw his seriousness, though, and nodded. She signaled her guards to follow her, and headed reluctantly back toward King's Tower. Ghost whined, approached, and pressed the top of his great head into the middle of Jon's chest. Jon slipped his arms around his friend and held the direwolf close, warming his face in the thick coat for a few long, heaving breaths. When he let him go, he felt the smallest mite better, and clicked his tongue to ask the wolf to follow him to Sam's room by the library.

They crossed the frigid yard side by side, and Ghost stopped at the bottom of the tower stairs while Jon knocked on the door. After some rustling, Sam swung the heavy door open.

"Thank the Gods, Jon!" he exclaimed. Light spilled out of his candle-lit room, and his Brother took in Jon's burnt clothes and torn hands, which Dany likely hadn't been able to see in the darkness of the yard. He cried, "Come in! Where in the Seven Hells did you go?"

Jon just shook his head. "I flew out, to think. I'll tell you the rest later. I need the diary."

Sam pressed his lips together, nodded with worried solemnity, and went to retrieve the book from a side table. He came back with it between his thick hands and said, "Whatever you were thinking about, it looks like it nearly killed you. Are you sure you want to take this now?"

"The book, Sam," Jon said shortly. No possible good could come of waiting.

Sam sighed and said, "All right. Take good care of it. And yourself." He looked at him hesitantly and said, "If you're going to tell the Queen... well, protect yourself. Go armed and take Ghost with you. If you want me to call your guard--"

Jon felt an ugly heat stir in him. "Ghost has been with her as much as me since she arrived. There's no need, Sam."

Sam's face reddened and he started to say, "She's a _killer--" _

Jon stopped him flat. "--And so are you, and I, and my little sisters, and nearly every honorable man we know. She is the Queen, not a catspaw."

Sam look unconvinced and a little defensive, but simply added, "Well, Gilly and I, we're here for you if you need us."

Jon swallowed his discontent and let himself take that in. He would need his friends badly in the days to come, whatever happened with the Daenerys. He simply nodded, wordlessly took the book and retreated down the stairs.

As he walked towards her rooms, Ghost padding by his side, he tried to hold in his mind what he must say to her. That there would be no wedding, that the fault was not hers, that he loved her, that they must end their connection forever, that... what else? He knew she would be devastated, possibly furious, and that she would have a thousand questions, many of which he could not answer.

When he saw her door at the top of the tower stairs, four Dothraki in heavy furs in front of it, he was suddenly, for a flash, back at Castle Black, walking through the tunnel toward Mance's camp after Ygritte had died in his arms. The glacial cold of the Wall pressed down on top of him, the tunnel seemed to shrink around him--he coughed to clear his stuttering heart, and the horrid memory went away. He knew why it had come, though. On that day, he'd been willing to be boiled or flayed alive for some excuse to join his woman in death. His misery was hardly less now.

He told Ghost, "Go back to my room, lad. I'll be there later."

His other half simply whined at him and sat down in the snow. Jon centered his mind and pushed at him the image of his own corridor, with the thick rug he left beside the door for Ghost to lounge on. Ghost whined again, and deftly licked an unburned place on Jon's hand.

For a moment, Jon wondered if Sam had been right, if he was going into danger, and then dismissed it. Dany would never. She simply wouldn't. Ghost grunted, stood, and turned away, loping in the direction of Jon's rooms.

When he mounted the top of the tower stairs, the Dothraki guards looked at him with more concern on their faces than he'd ever seen them express, then opened the door to him. Dany was pacing next to the fire, the leather soles of her boots tapping the floor. He realized distantly that he was so used hearing the whisper of her bare feet in this room, as she welcomed him to her bed and body, that the sound was foreign to his ears.

She didn't rush to him this time, but just stood wringing her hands, waiting for him to speak. Behind her, hanging on the high hooks used for warming clothes against the chimney, was a magnificent, flowing white dress and a cloak in red and black. Her wedding dress and maiden cloak.

Then, she took in the damage to his clothes and hands. Her jaw dropping, she strode over to him, reaching for his hands to examine them, perfectly confident in her touch. He dodged her hands and stepped away. Astonished hurt on her face, she froze as he lowered himself painfully into a chair. Saddlesoreness from a battling dragon was a hundred times worse than that from a walking horse. Everything in him ached.

"I have something I must show you," he said, and set the book on the table, open at the marked page.

She looked at him with such confusion and hurt. "You won't even tell me why you're burned and bloody?" And then her frightened, angry temper rose up. "Or where in the Hells you took my child, without telling me, with no--"

"After," he said. "Sit."

She was no longer used to being treated tersely, and bristled. That was better, he thought. Better to see her hate him than broken.

He said, "Sam Tarly brought this book with him from the Citadel. It's why he came, not for the battle. He was my Brother in the watch, and is my best friend."

Her eyes narrowed in suspicion. "This--you flying off before the battle, before our wedding--is about a _book? _Did he give you this book because I executed his father, who was fighting Cersei Lannister's battles for her, and whose man shot Drogon?"

"No," he said. "He journeyed months to bring it. It gives the story of my parents. Bran confirmed the meaning with his greensight."

The words took her aback, and her face softened. She took up the book and sat in the other wooden chair.

He went on, "It's the diary of a maester, the Grand Maester of the Seven, who served during Robert's Rebellion."

She read the passage, far faster than he had, then read it again, and looked up at him. For a long moment, it seemed a thousand different expressions crossed her face. The one that settled was a tentative, vulnerable wonder as she looked into his eyes. "You are blood of my blood," she whispered. "I am not the last of our family."

"No," he said. He could not make the next words come.

She must've read his expression, and her eyes filled with fear. "You don't--?" she began. "You're not happy? My love, tell me what this means, for us."

He'd put an arrow through Mance Rayder's heart once, as a mercy, damn the consequences to himself. Now the arrow was for her heart, and his own.

"I will _never _stop loving you," he said, forcing his shaking voice to be firm. "But you are my aunt. All relations between us must end. There will be no wedding."

She looked horrified. "No," she said fiercely, voice rising. "We are Targaryens, Jon, the blood of the dragon. The rules of sheep, and lions, and wolves are not our rules--"

His brain went haywire, and all the words he had planned blew away like leaves in his rage and pain. The sentence that had been echoing in his head the whole trip back spilled like bile out of his mouth. "It's abomination!" he thundered, to drown out her justifications and his desperate temptation. "To gods and men. You know that!"

"I _don't," _she cried. "What are you talking about?!"

"We would be despised or killed if we forced this on my people, and even if we weren't, any child we had would be monstrous."

She flinched back as if he'd punched her. _"Monstrous,"_ she said, looking sickened by the word.

"Yes," he said brutally. "It's worse than being a bastard. The stain could never be washed out."

She start to hyperventilate, and her hands clenched so tightly on the table's edge that her knuckles went as dead white as her face. Her voice frigid and shaking, she said, _"This _is what you have thought of me_\--"_

His head reeled, not _her, _he _never... _"Dany--that's not what I meant, you know it's not--"

_"Others take you!"_ she screamed, her face a mask of agony. _"You are free of me, you can tell me the truth now!" _She stood abruptly and loomed over the table at him. "Now tell me _Jon Snow, _or whatever you will call yourself, _what of your claim to the throne?"_

The guilt at what he'd said to her was like lead in his chest, but at least he could give her this. "I am loyal to you now and forever. I will renounce the throne, but I will claim my Houses."

"No," she snarled. "You will not tell _anyone _who you are."

An unexpected fury filled his blood, as if he were on dragonback again. "You will not take my name from me!" he shouted.

She leaned into his raging face, as if being roared at by Drogon and refusing to back down.

"That is a _command," _she said, again the haughty, unbending monarch he hadn't seen since their first meeting. _"Your name_ means my death. Your sister, your lords, even your smallfolk, they hate me and love you for what we both are. If you announce who you are, especially before I've taken the kingdoms, they will raise you to my place before my blood is dry on the floor."

He would never let that happen. "I will protect you, I swear it," he said.

"How? By controlling Sansa, or your brother's mouth? Or Samwell Tarly, who now despises me as much as the rest? Your oaths mean nothing to me, now," she said. "Prove your loyalty or declare war on me, I do not care which," she said, and turned her back, dismissing him. A new kind of pain reverberated through him. He had stopped their marriage, but she was acting as though he was rejecting _her._

"Dany," he warned, "don't end it this way between us--"

_"Dothrakquoyi!"_ she shouted, and her bloodriders burst through the door, arakhs out.

_He had no time to draw. He would die again, at Dany's orders--_

_"Jif kisha give mae athdrivar?"_ one snarled.

_"Vos,"_ she snapped, and spoke rapidly in their harsh, buzzing language. Then she said coldly, "I have told them that the Warden of the North is injured. You will be escorted to the maester." Then she looked at Jon darkly. "Is Rhaegal hurt?"

He nodded, shamed. "The right wing, his face, possibly his legs."

Her eyes blazed with anger again. "Cahosso, Jharro, _gwe ma anna._"

Two of the big men hustled him out the door and down the stairs, no gentleness in them. Behind him, he heard Dany's boots slamming down the wooden stairs, and then crunching off in the direction of the dragons' nest. It was only when he was with the maester that he realized he'd left the diary in the Queen's rooms.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Jif kisha give mae athdrivar?" Should we kill him?
> 
> "Vos" No.
> 
> "Gwe ma anna." Come with me.


	5. Injuries

When morning came, Jon swam up through an exhausted sleep from dreams of dragonfire and death: Dany's death, Ygritte's death, his death, wights, Viserion's fall, Jeor Mormont, his father's beheading, Hardhome, Rhaegal screaming, all mixed together in a cauldron of flame. He reached anxiously for Dany's warm body for comfort, as he often did after nightmares, and found the bed empty for once. The cold linen sheets, smelling only of himself and soot, were what pushed the haze out of his head.

All he had learned and done yesterday rolled back over him like the tide, swamping him in fresh grief.

What had been the worst of it, he wondered, as he took in his silent, dusty room. Losing Ned Stark for a father and gaining a pair of oathbreaking fools? Risking Rhaegal's life on an impulse, as stupid as letting Ramsey Bolton lure him into the open battlefield? No, it was the word _monstrous. _He'd been so wrapped up in rage and shame, he'd used it against Dany. Dany, who, despite what all knew of the consequences of incest, was nothing but a perfect blaze that had once burned away the darkness in his life. And _abomination. _It was what the world called all the loving they'd done together, and he'd spat the same at her as if it meant nothing to him but that. It was the first true and fearless love he'd ever felt, and all he'd had to say about it was that it was hated by the Gods.   
  
And what did he get in return, for all he'd lost or thrown in the rubbish pit? Nothing.  
  
Last night, sitting in the maester's herb-decked workroom, having his hands bandaged and smeared with a stinking, goosegrease salve, he'd reconciled himself to the fact that Dany was right--he could never announce to the world who he was. No matter how bitter the flavor it left in his mouth, he would remain a motherless bastard, for the rest of his life, if need be. He had broken Dany's heart, but he would protect her with his life, and his honor. He and Eddard Stark, he'd realized with no pleasure, were still as alike as everyone had always said.  
  
As he looked around his room, though, the only breath and life in it his own, he felt the future stretch out in unbearable emptiness. His world had been upended. Everything he knew of himself, and his family, and the love of his life, and the kingdom itself, had been changed forever. He had spent his youth in a kind of half-life of looking in on other peoples' intimacies, and then, for just a breath of time, had been fully seen and fully known by Dany. Now, if he told no one else what he was, he would surely never be known again. Eddard Stark had kept a monumental secret, but he had a wife, children. Jon couldn't conceive of being with another woman after Dany, even if he survived the war.   
  
After all he had been through, and all that was coming, his willingness to endure his solitude was weak. Sam and Bran knew, and must be sworn to secrecy. If they did, surely Arya could know as well. Sansa, he dismissed out of hand.

At that thought, he rolled slowly up out of the creaking bed, his whole body aching from riding and raging. He must face the day. There was a cold cup of the maester's painkilling tea waiting for him on his night table, and as he drank the bitter stuff down, he noticed the shortness of the shadows on his stone floor. He'd slept bloody late, and would have to hurry. He and Dany would have to announce their broken betrothal to the nobles at the morning meal, and they should decide together how to say it. She wouldn't want to speak to him now, he knew, but she'd be far better than he at knowing how to say it right. He was no good with words, last night mortifying proof of it. And, if he went to her this morning, it would give him a chance to right what he'd said to her, though he did not know how he'd say it, or even how to think it.   
  
The fact that he'd implied that Dany was monstrous was nigh unforgivable. But incest itself, and what it created....  
  
For a moment, he thought queasily of one of Winterfell's long-ago smallholders, a cantankerous young fool whose name he couldn't remember. The man had had a mite of land, barely enough to keep a few animals and a field, and he was so lazy and stubborn that he never traded out his stud animals, no matter how the oldsters wagged their fingers at him. Year after year, he'd skipped the husbandmen's faires and bred his cows to the same walleyed bull, his ewes to the same two snaggle-horned rams. He was a good joke, with his ever dopier-looking beasts and slackard's ways, until the year Jon had been eight or nine. Then, whispers came to Winterfell that the man's animals had started throwing monsters--a two-headed calf, a lamb with five legs, and worse. Thrilled with the horror of it, he and Theon and Robb had immediately run out to the man's holding and peeked over the stone fence of his lambing pen. They got what they'd come for--the deformed lamb was still tottering about under the low roof, seemingly untroubled by the boneless, hoofed excuse for a leg hanging limply from its hip. They were still sniggering and giggling when they heard the gritty sound of something being dragged. They'd ducked low and watched as the farmer hauled something big and dead toward his ill-kept manure heap. The man threw the thing on the heap and walked silently away, shoulders hunched under his ragged homespun. When he'd disappeared back into his cottage, the three of them had snuck over to look at his leavings. Whatever it had been--lamb or calf, it was big, but skinless and eyeless, like it had been born far too early, and its innards hung outside its body, as if it already been butchered. They were staring at it in mute shock when the thing _moaned _and thrashed its skeletal legs. The three of them had screamed, and run all the way back home. Robb, who could never keep anything from his mother, immediately told her what they'd seen. She'd gone white and sick looking, and sent not only Father, but the Septon to the man's holding. On the Septon's word, the man's entire herd was slaughtered, and the farmer was exiled from the North for creating abominations.   
  
It was impossible to forget such things. Though Father had turned it into a lesson about listening to the wisdom of elders, Jon would never forget that the real lesson was about what happened to things that were bred with their own blood.

He pushed such things from his mind as he dressed and washed. He couldn't be even thinking like that in her presence.   
  
When he made his way to her door, men of her usual guard rotation were stationed, but when they saw him coming, they did not automatically stand aside for him to knock, as they had since White Harbor.

"I have business with the Queen," he said to one he knew had the Common Tongue.

"No," the man said flatly.

There was no getting around the announcement. "It cannot wait--" he began, then heard quiet footsteps behind him. It was Missandei, holding a large, covered bowl. Her eyes were sorrowful, but met his with stony calm. The guards immediately stepped aside for her, and Jon touched her shoulder as she went to pass him.

"I need to speak with Her Grace," he said. "We must make plans."

"Queen Daenerys will be available to her vassals after the noon hour," she said simply, and entered the room. The guards slammed the door pointedly behind her.

_Vassals._

_Fuck._

It would have to be Davos or even Tyrion, then, for advice, and he didn't know what she'd told them, if anything. He tried Davos's room, and then Tyrion's beside it, and found them both empty. He suppressed a groan as the bell clanged for the meal, and went reluctantly to the Great Hall alone.

From the door, he saw that the high table was filled except for Arya's place and Dany's--the Queen's. Bran was picking at his food expressionlessly, the Queen's advisors were glaring at him, but Sansa was biting into a slab of toast with great gusto, smiling with sly satisfaction. The set of her lips made him sick, for her to take such pleasure in their pain. People were eating, but stopped dead when they saw him. Before he could even walk behind his family to his seat, the questions began.

"My Lord," Lord Cerwyn, demanded, standing with a posture of pure outrage, "What is the meaning of your breaking your betrothal with the Queen?"

At Jon's knife-sharp glare, Cerwyn insisted, "Word of it is all over the camps. Do you deny it?"

He stood at his chair, fists clenched. "I do not," he said. "It is a personal matter. That is the final word I will say about it."

"Over a _personal matter,_ you ended a military alliance days before war begins?" spluttered Lord Amber. "Will she go back south with her armies? Her dragons? Will she bloody well use them on _us_ because of your ill faith?"

"The alliance is unchanged," he said, hoping it was true. _Knowing_ it was true--she would fight for life, no matter her pain. "The war is coming and we all fight on the side of the living, Queen Daenerys most of all."

"And your title?" Sansa asked smoothly. "Has that changed?"

What was she getting at?

She continued, looking so pleased with herself he could shake her. "Are you still Warden of the North? Or will you be King in the North once more?"

A murmur passed through the room. She was giving people treasonous ideas, was what she was doing.

"I am the Warden of the North and the Queen's loyal bannerman," he said dangerously. "I keep my oaths. If any here do not, then they can leave and make their own luck with the king of the dead. I will meet them in battle either way."

He yanked out his chair and sat down to shut them all up. He had no appetite, but knocked back the tankard in front of him with a vengeance. When he set his cup down, he almost jumped out of his skin. Arya was sitting silently next to him, in Dany's spot, as if she'd appeared out of thin air.

"Your dragon is stitched up," she said simply. Whether she'd heard what he'd said, or knew any of what had transpired with the Queen, he couldn't tell, she was so bloody cool.

He startled. It genuinely hadn't occurred to him that dragons could be doctored. He would have to go to Rhaegal immediately after the meal and apologize. He grunted at his own stupidity, and asked, "Who told you?"

She spooned herself up a plateful of eggs and said, "I saw the torches lit all night around the nest. I went to see if I could help."

"Did you?" he asked

"No one could get near him except her and the maester. She calmed your dragon while the maester worked, and after."

He felt a surge of guilt for recovering abed while Rhaegal was suffering and Dany in the bitter cold. "She stayed late?" he asked.

"Past dawn," she said. Then she asked around a mouthful of food, "There were burns, on his face and legs. What made them?"

"The only thing that could," he said darkly.

"And why did you leave, not that--" Sansa asked.

"Indeed," Tyrion broke in, face livid with anger. "Please, tell us why you took the Queen's--well, I suppose it is _your_ dragon, now--and sought out the Night King's army with no scouts, no military support, no word of your position, and apparently little ability to defend yourself in the air? The Queen tells us you did it, but we have all been waiting eagerly to know why."

"As I said," Jon grated, "I will say no more about it. It's personal."

"A Lord Paramount's excursions into the heart of an enemy army with half of our most important weapons is not, under any circumstances, _personal," _the dwarf barked.

He clenched his jaw to hold back the half dozen scathing answers behind it. "It will not happen again," he bit out. "All that matters is what I learned."

"I disagree," Sansa interjected smugly. "If Daenerys influenced you to make poor decisions, shouldn't we know?"

"The _Queen's _influence is not the one to worry about," said Ser Jorah, big fist clenching his eating knife.

Jon could've torn into him with guilty rage, but Varys deflected mildly, "You learned something about our enemy? Perhaps we should begin with that."

_Thank fuck._

"The dead dragon is badly injured," Jon said. "The Night King can make skeletons run, but he can't make half-rotted wings fly like whole ones. Viserion was slow, and relied on fire without trying to use his talons or teeth. The Night King wasn't riding him, and I don't know if he can. The army itself is bigger, by tens of thousands. They've been recruiting."

"How many did you kill?" Arya asked.

He thought briefly about the sweeps of fire, the density of the exploding corpses. "A thousand or more, in four or five passes."

Tyrion asked with a tight jaw, "So, you injured Rhaegal and yourself for, what, one percent of the Night King's army? Less? While alerting him that we have a second dragonrider? Fuck."

Tormund, who had kept silent until now, said, "Sounds fuckin' stupid when you put it that way."

Jon was done with the conversation. They knew all that was useful now, and would only harp on him if he stayed. He pushed away his untouched plate and stood.

"I'm going to check on the dragons," he said.

As he strode out, his mind gnawed on what Sansa had said. The idea that Dany made him impulsive was foolish. He'd always been hot-blooded when his heart was involved, and had paid sorely for it before. Danaerys settled him, tempered him, like heat and cool water strengthened steel. He did the same for her. Rhaegal, though--they shared a mind when they flew, and a dragon's mind was fire and blood. He'd not been himself in the battle--_they _had been _themself. _He'd have to be very careful to keep control while they were merged, something he'd never thought to do in his wolf dreams.

When he left the keep, he squinted against the cold, blustery wind and saw what looked to be a single, black boulder humped in the middle of the dragon's nest. When he approached, he saw that it was Drogon's massive wing, which he had draped over his sleeping littler brother. Rhaegal's tail was all that was showing of him, and the bigger dragon was groaning a note so deep it was almost below hearing. Jon approached carefully, knowing how snappish an injured animal could be when awakened. Drogon spotted him, trumpeted quietly in his direction, and withdrew his wing.

Dany was curled up against Rhaegal's chest, a knot of white softness against the dragon's scorched hide. Her chin was tucked down, as if she were a baby animal in a den, hibernating or injured herself. She lifted her head and looked up at him, and he saw that her eyes were reddened pools of misery.

They looked at each other silently, the weak winter sun stripping the color from their faces while wind whipped loose tendrils of their hair.

"He showed me," she finally said, voice a croak, nose swollen.

He shifted in his boots. "Showed you what?"

"All of it. Viserion. The battle. Your..." she swallowed hard, "reaction to what you'd learned."

_Fuck._

Rhaegal woke up, gave a high moan, and swung his head around to Jon. Jon reached out to stroke him and received a barrage of impressions. The sense of welcoming and soothing, a memory of stinging pain under torchlight, wistfulness for the sky and hunt, and, in a very different flavor, a wash of grief so tidal it could sink a warship. Dany instantly pushed up and stepped away from Rhaegal, and the sadness snuffed out like a blown candle.

She wasn't angry now, Jon realized, or it was so small in relation to her grief that it hardly mattered. She went to stand stiffly next to Drogon, her hands folded in front of her.

He _needed_ to apologize to her, to explain what he thought of her and what they had been together, but did he really know, himself, and could he say it without tearing at their wounds?

"The words I used--" he started, but she looked away and interrupted in a torn voice.

"Don't. _Please."_

"Dany--"

"Rhaegal should not fly," she deflected, cutting her eyes to the side, "until the tear in his wing heals, but if hemust fly in the battle, he should join at the last moment he can."

Then they would not be talking about last night at all? It felt empty as a desert to stand not five feet from her and yet be so utterly disconnected.

She was right about what she'd said, though, and Jon nodded reluctantly. Injuring his dragon further would do no good.

"And," she continued carefully, "because you won't have time to practice, you should not ride him in the fight."

He bridled. "No. We need the advantage of two--"

"Your death would _not _be an advantage," she retorted sharply, "and neither would his. You were fleeing Viserion, not engaging him, and you barely survived. This will be a fight to the death in the air. Rhaegal would be in more danger trying to keep you on his back than he would be flying free."

"I am his rider, not you," Jon replied, feeling entitled and angry and knowing she was right.

"I am his _mother," _she said. "My bond with him isn't a rider's but it didn't disappear when yours appeared. I've led them both in battle and I can again."

It was no worse than their old plan, but to have this stripped away from him as well was crushing. "And what if I need him on the ground?" he asked.

Her eyes hardened and a fierce gust of wind almost carried her words away. "He will go to you, whether you ask him to or not."

"You will lose control over him?" He didn't like the idea of it.

She nodded reluctantly.

He looked at a burned, unidentifiable animal carcass by his feet. He dreaded voicing the thought in his head, but now was the time. "I hate like death to ask this, but what will happen to Drogon if you cannot fight?"

Some new pain passed over her face, and she worked her mouth as if the words stung to speak."If I die, you mean." It wasn't a question. "If I fell to the enemy, he would finish the battle, and then likely stay here with you and his brother. If Rhaegal died as well, he might accept you as his rider."

There was something in her tone that made him uneasy. Then he understood. He, of all people, must.

She nodded slowly at his comprehension, eyes brimming again. "If I fall to treachery, I don't know what he will do. But I've asked him to spare you." Then she walked rapidly away, shoulders tight with anguish.


	6. The Last Gift

Jon spent the rest of that horrible morning alone with Rhaegal in the blustery, meat-stinking dragon's nest. The moment Daenerys had disappeared into the castle, Drogon had left them to perch on the roof of King's Tower, as if to stay as near to her as possible, not even sparing a look at Rhaegal and Jon before he took off in a blast of wind. Jon immediately began examining Rhaegal's injuries, murmuring apologies for his neglect and accepting back the dragon's instant, almost tender dismissals in turn.  
  
The man-high rip in Rhaegal's right wing was stitched up with a jagged line of catgut and then patched on one side with a reinforcing layer of what looked like saddle leather. His burns already seemed to be healing, though when Jon touched him, he felt an echoed rawness all over his own face, chest, legs, and feet. Then he and Rhaegal simply communed, practicing touching minds. For Jon, the process was like wading through a flowing, bankless river of exchanged images, thoughts, and feelings. Jon practiced dipping in and out of their shared mind, and keeping them focused. They thought together about their battle the day before, replaying mistakes and moments of triumph, focusing on ways they might track and fight the Night King and Viserion when they met again. In spare moments, though, Rhaegal kept throwing images of his mother's suffering face at Jon, urging him repeatedly to give her fire, meat, _love_. The dragon didn't seem to understand that that was impossible, and acted as if Jon's having caused the problem in the first place was utterly beyond the dragon's complex, but alien comprehension. 

Jon left when the dragons' meal arrived, bleating and struggling, around noon. He strode back toward the icicle-hung castle, wishing he could go sit in the godswood and tend his sword, as Ned Stark would do when troubled. The place was utterly denied to him, though. His memory of Lord Stark was too blackened, and far worse, this was the hour he himself should've been kneeling under the heart tree with his queen, celebrating the greatest joy of his life, despite doom's relentless tromp toward them. That that was forever taken from him tainted the place, and made him think of how the once-loved sanctuary was even more horribly blighted for Sansa. 

Wanting to spare the Queen the sight of him, he decided to avoid the inner keeps and instead pitch in with the builders who were reinforcing the northernmost gates of the castle. When he got inside, though, he turned a corner to see a servant settling Bran's chair into a dry corner of the yard. His once-mischievous little brother was gazing emptily at the sky as Jon went to him, and then, without seeming to see him, said, "Jaime Lannister will be here soon. Alone."

"He's riding out ahead of his army?" Jon asked, dread creeping into him.

Bran said hollowly, "There is no army. Queen Cersei never planned to send them. I should've looked before now."

_Seven bleeding Hells._

He thought of cold, proud look on Cersei's face as she'd lied to them, of the parlay's unbearably bitter costs, and of the thousands of highly trained, heavily armed Lannister men who should've been marching in to fight on their side. It was a blow, and they would all be feeling it when the battle began. How many more such blows would they be able to stand, he wondered.

_______________

When the sun began its afternoon arc toward the earth, Dolorous Edd arrived with another. The battle was coming, before dawn. To block the horrific news about Last Hearth and little Ned Umber from his mind, Jon subsumed himself in drilling smallfolk from the various camps in use of sword, shield, and axe. Most of the volunteers were old, or painfully young, or grim-looking women, because a whole generation of hale young men had already been killed or maimed in the recent wars. When they'd learned as much as they could without overtiring, he dismissed them to eat, and took his turn on the teams retrieving practice ammunition for Tyrion's war machines. Soldiers would load catapults with shot, bolt the ammunition together with chains that could be smeared with pitch and lit, and then, at the measure of a ten-count drumbeat, a horn would sound and the triggermen would fire simultaneously across the battlefield. Though the chained stone balls didn't fly as far as loose shot, they cut hideous swaths in the land beyond the main trenches and would hopefully rip apart hundreds of wights per fire. Jon and his fellows rode Winterfell's stoutest plow horses out onto the field and used sledges to bring the practice ammunition back in for repairs and reuse.

When his logy borrowed mare started to puff and flag, Jon switched out with another man and led her to the watering station near the enormous makeshift corral where the Dothraki herd was kept. He'd been checking her hooves as she drank when glanced up and he saw a white figure pop up over the dark heads of the Essosis who were preparing horses in the corral. It was Dany, her back to him, standing on the rail fence to look out over the herd. She began pointing to one horse, then another, then another, while mounted men cut the chosen animals out of the herd with quick, easy lunges. He stood silently, out of her peripheral vision, stricken at the sight of her. Her braid swung in a shining arc over the striped back of her fur coat, and the sweet angles of the edges of her face reminded him of a hundred times he'd secretly watched her, before he'd known he'd loved her, and after. He should not be watching her so, but he couldn't stop himself from drinking in what might be the last moments he saw her in sunlight. 

From the back, she looked peaceful, her movements calm and purposeful. As she called out a word or two in Dothraki to emphasize which horse she wanted, her voice was as confident as he was used to hearing, not torn with tears or shaking with anger. After this morning, when she had been a white flame of controlled fury while she interrogated Ser Jaime and snapped at her Hand, it was good to see her surrounded by people she trusted and good animals.

When she was done, her riders had pulled a string of some thirty horses from the rest and put them in a small, separate corral off to the side. Jon recognized a few of them in particular, and all of them as extraordinary. She was likely pulling out the best of the herd to be spared from fighting, for breeding or keeping as her personal mounts once the war was over. Dany walked among them, checking their eyes, legs, and feet, running her hands over their bright withers and hocks. They were mostly the agile bays the Dothraki were famous for, who had near-endless endurance and a gallop steady enough to shoot arrows from. A few of these she sent back to the main herd, but none of the handful of unusually colored horses that she'd picked. They were of varying kinds--a line of stunning silvers, a few in a gold that seemed to glow in the sunlight, some dapples, sorrels, and roans.

The last beast she pulled was likely the finest, and one Jon had admired several times as he'd explored Dragonstone alone in his first, restless, frustrated days on the island, before she'd allowed him to mine the dragonglass. He was a vast, gorgeously configured black stallion with a little white blaze, built like a warhorse but intelligent and gentle as a big dog. His feathered hooves were nigh as big as dinner plates, and his hide shone like a starry night. Dany called out something, and he turned and walked straight to her as she jumped down from the fence. She pulled something from each of her coat pockets, and his nose arrowed to her right hand. She opened it, palm skyward, and the destrier lipped up whatever she was holding for him. She fondly stroked his big neck and cheeks while he crunched what was likely a withered little apple, then she took the other object and carefully knotted it into his mane with something like sinew. With a final pat, she left him and pulled a leather bag out of another pocket before going horse by horse, decorating each one with objects she pulled from the bag.

Jon watched until he realized he was long overdue to return with his draft horse, and got back to the catapults in time to be sent back to water a whole string of other beasts that needed breaks. He led them in a hoof-dragging, dusty line back to the corral. He saw that Dany had left, and the segregated herd was being fed a pile of grain at their fence line. He tied his string of plowhorses at the trough to drink and went to take some comfort in stroking his favorite. The handsome stallion was eating in the middle of the line, and he noticed as he walked past the rest that the items the Queen had tied to each horse were small, waxed-parchment tags of the kind sailors used to label cargo that was likely to get wet. Each one had writing on it in the same brown ink, as if they'd all been written at the same time, by the same hand. Most were tagged with one or two words, some in the incomprehensible, slashed Dothraki marks, and others in some version of curling Valyrian. But then, he saw that a very petite, gold mare wore one written in Dany's distinctively flourished Common. It said _Lord Tyrion Lannister_, and he realized what this was. These exquisite horses were being kept back as either gifts for after the war, or bequests in case she died. He stood staring at these living, breathing pieces of her generous heart, the product of her final act before facing death, and wondered who each was for, knowing with a stinging grief that none would be for him. Such things were done for between them.

He walked curiously down the line, now, looking for tags he could read. He saw that the best of the silvers was labeled _Ser Jorah of House Mormont,_ a beautiful bay was marked _Tormund Giantsbane, _a dark roan said _Ser Davos of House Seaworth, _and a lovely sorrel, touchingly, said, _"Gilly of the Free Folk." _How she had even met Gilly, he did not know. When he got to the black, he guessed the tag would be in Dothraki, naming one of her commanders or personal guards, who would be the only ones who could truly appreciate and use such an animal. The horse's tag was turned backward and tangled in the thick mane by the wind already, and Jon purposely, forlornly ignored it, talking to the horse as it ate, scratching around the flippy ears and wide, convex face. When the stallion cleared the ground between his hooves of grain, he kicked his big, ebony head up and nickered at Jon. Jon scratched under the luxuriant mane, and when his hand brushed the half-hidden tag, he couldn't stop himself from reaching for it. Unlike the others, it was folded in half. He flipped it open from the back, and inside it said in the Common Tongue, "I would rather have lived for you, but I do not mourn to give you what Rhakkaro gave me." His heart slowed in his chest. He slowly turned over the front of the tag. Simply, _Jon._

He stilled himself in the biting wind, ignoring the destrier as it shivered off a blown leaf and shied, pulling the tag from Jon's aching hand. This was the mount of her first Bloodrider, who had given his _life _for her and her people when they were starving in the Red Waste. It was the finest horse in her herd of thousands, and one of her last links to her husband. Jon did not move, though his muscles trembled with the desire to. If he did, he would run to find her, kiss her, and beg her to give him one last night before they both entered the endlessness of death.

Only Ned Stark's voice, telling him, "A life is a small thing, compared to honor," stopped him. Then, "Honor is like courage--it's only real when it's tested," his once-father whispered. Whatever Eddard Stark had been, whatever mistakes he had made, he was right about this, Jon knew. He gave the black stallion one last, long look, and went back to the castle to arm himself. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoa, I could swear I didn't actually push the button to publish this chapter. I was editing like four different chapters at once, and suddenly saw comments coming in. Welp, I guess you get a slightly rougher version than I intended. Enjoy? I'll answer comments as soon as I get a chance.


	7. The Fight

Surviving a battle is as much bone-stupid luck as it is skill. Using the war machines to obliterate the first charge of wights took skill. Using the Dothraki, with their burning arakhs, to cut along the edges to relieve pressure on the fire trenches took skill. Bran using flocks of white cave bats to guide the Queen to the mammoths and giants raging forward within the dead army took skill. It took skill for Jon to hack through dozens of wights when the castle was breached after the Unsullied's retreat, and to focus on his own opponents when the sky exploded in dragon screams and gouts of varicolored flame. It took skill to hold his mind in tight control, keeping his panic at bay when he was surrounded by snarling, snapping, gibbering ghouls, so that Rhaegal would stay in the air, tearing chunks out of his dead brother's throat while his mother and live brother tried to rip the Night King off his increasingly hobbled mount.

It was dumb luck, though, that he was two feet from the Broken Tower when the writhing, shrieking knot of battling dragons fell out of the sky and smashed through the structure, scattering the millennia-old building into rubble without smushing him. It was luck alone that Rhaegal spotted him as a wight giant was bearing down upon him as he lay stunned in the mud, and lit the giant into a swaying column of fire. And what was it but his fool luck to be born a true-blooded son of House Targaryen, so that his dragon would take him up on his injured wing and pull him into the sky, away from the sea of unholy enemies that were swamping into the place where he'd stood?

Jon was trying to keep them low and find a safe place to land when they spotted the other two dragons rising back into the air above him, writhing like dark smoke above a bonfire. Viserion had Drogon's shoulder clutched in his foul teeth, and was using his undead endurance to drag him laboriously through the sky. Danaerys was clinging onto her dragon's back vertically, stuck tight as a grass burr, screaming as she dodged the Night King's thrusting spear and urging her dragon to scorch him off.

_RAGE._

He and Rhaegal forgot any thought of safety and launched themselves straight at them, catching Viserion with a stunning blow that nearly ripped the rotting beast's jaw off. The impact whipped the two of them off in a tight spin, though, and Jon slid helplessly toward Rhaegal's shoulder, scrabbling with ice-slicked leather soles for footholds between scales. His dragon panicked to feel him fall and banked hard in the opposite direction, tilting Jon back onto his thorny back but tearing open his wing wound again with a sick, wet _splut_. When the world straightened, Jon saw that they had lost most of their altitude, while Dany, freed, was using Drogon's massive power to gain the higher air. She dove Drogon for Viserion's already tattered wing, and Jon saw from below when the black claws ripped the rotten flesh from shoulder joint to edge, destroying the sail of the limb. Viserion flopped to the side, twisting in his biggest brother's grip, guttering flame through half a dozen holes in neck and chest. Dany screamed something, Drogon bit at the neck and _yanked_, and the Night King slipped from his mount's back, falling like a meteor past Jon on his way to earth.

Jon's mind thought as one with Rhaegal's: _KILL!_

They folded their wings like a hunting falcon and hurtled toward the earth, then pulled up hard when they saw the demon kneeling where he'd fallen, in the middle of an ice-ringed impact crater.

_FIRE._

They hovered, their body heating like a volcano, expanding with breath and then contracting like a beating heart to pump inferno. A second column of fire exploded to join theirs, and he looked across his dragon's neck to see Dany, her eyes alight with bloodlust as she joined him in the burning. Then, as Rhaegal took a breath, Dany veered away, dodging the barely flying Viserion's flame and banking around him as he made a last-ditch effort to save his resurrector from her. Moments later, in the edge of Jon's mind, he sensed a stunning impact of Drogon with something else, and the dizzying effect of an uncontrolled spiral.

Jon had to focus on the holocaust in front of him. If the Night King somehow survived inside of it, he could be readying his weapon now. He and Rhaegal backed off, allowing the blaze they'd created to die down, and Jon watched his nightmare emerge from the dying conflagration in the crater. The enemy's spear was at the ready.

_Jon KILL. _

They hove backward with a few hard wingbeats, then Rhaegal dropped to the ground with a brutal thud. Jon leapt off his dragon's back, Longclaw poised, mind aflame, only to nearly break an ankle as he landed on a rolling mound of corpses and tumbled down it, the blasting wind of Rhaegal's retreat upward blinding him. He felt Rhaegal hesitate at seeing him fall, but Jon mentally commanded him to stay well clear of the Night King's range. After a few sickened, terrified seconds of pawing through gore Jon struggled off the heap of bodies, and then realized that as he and Rhaegal had retreated, they'd left the flame-cleared area and dropped him into a field of the newly dead and long-dead together.

Jon saw the Night King take a familiar posture of summoning, and all the dragon fire in his brain snuffed out, turning to icy terror. If Jon didn't get to the Night King _now, _he'd be fucked. He threw his exhausted body into a run, leaping over dead bodies, slipping on the frosty ground, only getting near enough to the monster to see him smile with ancient satisfaction. Jon felt a surge of some evil power, and glowing blue lights flickered all around him. Movement stirred in every corner of his vision as the dead began to rise with horrible spasms. The ones at his feet began reaching for him, and reaching for their swords. Within moments, he was walled in by pitiless, implacable corpses of his own people. He tried to call Rhaegal to him, but could sense his dragon was scrapping on the ground with his dead brother, scalded and caught in a stinking grip.

Jon was going to die.

His back was unguarded, he had no room to move, they were closing in--

The ground shook, and light, holy and blessed, exploded around him.

_Dany._

She and Drogon poured fire over his enemies, clearing him a long straight line toward the castle, then lit up the area a second time to steal the air from the flame and put it out. She'd made him a clear path straight toward the wall of the godswood, where the Night King had surely gone.

Though he heard Drogon screeching, he forced himself to run without looking back, thanking them both in his heart.

* * *

It was dumb luck again that saved him. He'd reached a wall of Walkers some twenty deep, who had closed in around the godswood's iron gates, blocking his pursuit of their creator. He was fighting them with a wolfish singlemindedness--blockblockPARRYdisarmKILLstabpivotparryKILLblock--when he sensed as much as he saw his littlest sister, his little Arya Underfoot, running along the parapets as softly as a kitten on her way toward Bran. As he fought for his life against the titanically strong demons, she disappeared over the godswood wall. Seconds later, some marrow-deep, animal instinct told him to leap backward and crouch low. When he heard her battle shriek and felt the surge of power a heartbeat later, he threw his arm over his face, saving himself from being mutilated for life by thousands of glass-sharp shards of exploding ice.

The power of the spellbreaking rumbled through the castle, driving unlife out of the dead and pouring it back into the core of the earth. A few shrill screams of wounded fighters still echoed around the bailey, but they were muted by the tens of thousands of soft tumbling thuds of dead-again bodies rolling off every surface in the keep and thumping to rest. In the sudden stillness after, he stumbled as fast as he could force his feet through the pile of ice in front of him, his sword dragging from his utterly spent arm. The godswood gate was open, and a stepstone-path of bodies, dusted with ice, led to Bran and Arya, the only living things in the sacred place. His sister, his incomprehensible baby sister, had saved them all.

Jon managed to get to them, nearly falling over a corpse he vaguely realized to be Theon Greyjoy on the way. Arya still gripped her Valyrian steel dagger and was bleeding all over her face.

He had no words. He simply grappled her into his embrace, dragged her over to their brother, and hugged them both with all his remaining strength. To breathe them in again, to breathe in life and relief and hope, felt like the biggest surprise of his life, like seeing a second sun rise in the morning. After a long, desperate hug, he pulled away and gently thumbed their faces, getting Bran's clean skin smeary with gore, and surely doing no good to Arya's wounds.

No amount of praise could ever be worthy of what his sister had done, so he just shakily asked her, "You're going to be bloody insufferable after this, aren't you?" 

She smiled her tiny smile, and bumped his bleeding forehead with her own.

"Did the dragons survive?" she asked, raspy-voiced.

Jon checked with his mind, and felt two points of flame, one the bonfire that was Rhaegal's presence to him, and the other, muted heat that was Drogon. They were both in pain, but his reeling mind couldn't pinpoint their problems or location.

He nodded and said, "They'll need a maester. When I've told them what you've done, maybe they'll let you help him."

She almost-smiled and said, "Let's find our people. I want to see who we have left."

Then, Bran, hereto silent and seemingly unmoved by the enormity of the situation, said, "Sansa is unhurt. Our dead were resurrected in the crypts with them. Gendry is looking for Arya."

"Why's the blacksmith looking for you?" Jon asked, utterly confused, but Arya was ducking her head to hide a grin, and was suddenly wheeling Bran toward the castle proper. She'd blushed like a maid with a lover--

_Dany._

_Oh Gods._

_Where was Dany?_

She had been on her dragon the last time he'd seen her, clearing him a path through the field of wights. He felt his breath go out of him. She had been _on the ground _in the field of wights, after the Night King raised his second army. Fear clenched his bones and he limped through the yard toward the opening in the castle wall he'd come through. He looked out on the nearly still field and saw... nothing. The charred path she'd made for him lay straight and black as the road to the Hells, and beyond it rose the ice spires of the crater where the Night King had come to earth, but there was no dragon, and no sign of Dany, living or dead. He picked his way through the heaps of bodies and tumbled stone, and came across a dazed-looking archer just coming down a staircase. The man must've somehow held his position on the battlements the entire time.

He grabbed the man's shoulders and said, "Where is the Queen?"

The man looked at him blankly. Jon gave him a hard shake and said, "The black dragon, where is he?"

The man managed to get out mushily, through a mouthful of recently broken teeth, "He's down. On the field, past the tower wit' the bells in't."

_Drogon was down._

From some unknown reserve, Jon mustered a panicked strength and climbed, stumbled, and dragged himself around the wall, into the battlefield, and over the heaps of bodies blocking his view. As the growing dawn lit the carnage in front of him with an incongruous, gentle pink light, he turned the corner of the south wall, and there, an arrow's flight from the castle, lay Drogon. He was on his belly, unmoving. 

Jon clambered toward him, asking with his mind, _Where is your mother, where is your mother, WHERE IS SHE???_

The dragon did not answer.

As Jon got closer, he saw blood dripping red from dozens, _hundreds_ of wounds on Drogon's hide, raising patches of steam from the hoarfrosted ground around him. His much-pierced right wing was curled forward as if protecting something, and Jon felt as if a whole other doom was waiting for him under there. If she was dead...

When he reached the dragon, the enormous creature cracked one exhausted eye open and whined a slow, screeching note that made Jon's teeth hurt. Then Drogon edged his wing back.

Dany was on the ground, kneeling, utterly still. She held a long dragonglass sword, filthy with corpse flesh, in her lap, and in front of her, in a circle cleared of other bodies, was a dead man in Northern armor.

Jon stood frozen on his feet. It was Jorah Mormont. The man's breastplate was pierced in a dozen places, the blood running in straight lines down from the wounds, showing he'd fought standing until the end.

Dany didn't look up, but after a few heartbeats said dully, "He was the first person who ever loved me. He was my first friend."

Jon managed to get to one knee beside her, the horribly familiar nature of the man's wounds and Dany's misery stirring his own deepest pain. He wanted to comfort her any way he could, but the great distance he'd built stood between them. She was _alive, _he told himself, _alive and safe, _and that was all that mattered.   
  
"If he could've chosen a way to die, you know this would've been it," he managed to say.

"It doesn't make it better," she said. Then she looked blearily up at him, and around them, taking in the carnage and the endless, motionless bodies.

"Did you kill him?" she asked, finally. "The Night King?"

"No," he said. "My sister, if you can believe it."

Her face screwed up in confusion. "What did she use... _her hospitality and warm wishes?"_

He cocked his head for a moment, and realized that she meant _Sansa. _

He felt a smile crack the dried muck on his face, and something like a laugh stir his belly.

"The _other _sister," he said.

The laugh grew bigger. As it broke through his guts and out through his mouth, he saw her face change, too. Her mouth quirked, then she grinned, then her sweet laugh rang like a bell. The world surged with life again as dawn's light poured around them, and they were both cackling and guffawing and practically crying with hilarity in the field of horror and death.  
  
She fell over with her giggling, then tried to stand with a still-sniggering _"Ow" _as she put weight on some hidden injury. He couldn't help himself. He stood, stooped, and swept her bodily off the ground, into his arms. _Finally, finally,_ he was holding her, they were face to face, noses almost touching, her scent of sweat and dragon and sweet Essosi spices somehow wiping out the tonnes of rot around them.

Her soft mouth opened and tilted toward him, and he unthinkingly, hungrily kissed her. Her touch poured warmth and comfort and heat back into his brokenness, wiping out his fear and the battle and everything leading up to it. She curled her tongue around his and he was suddenly ready to tear her clothes off, surely either his rooms or hers were still intact--

"My love," she whispered, abject relief on her face. _That _stopped him. He had to rein himself, he _made _himself pull back. He broke his gaze, turned it to the distance, snapping the connection to steady himself and avoid her eyes. This was forbidden to them, and always would be.

He started carefully walking through the field as a soft, gentle snow began to fall, still carrying her like the bride he could not make her be. He felt her go stiff in his arms at his withdrawal, but it did not matter. He still held her, and would take any dregs of comfort he could from it.

She let him go a few steps, then looked around them. People were starting to emerge through the castle wall and thousands of riders were appearing from the far edges of the battlefield. She twisted in his arms and said urgently, "Put me down."

"No," he said simply.

"I have to walk--"

_"Don't ask it of me,"_ he ground out. He couldn't do it, he couldn't bear to put her down, not yet, Gods please, not yet. He kept going.

She grabbed his arm and said, _"Jon! _If the Dothraki see me being carried off the battlefield, someone could challenge me for rule."

He snorted and held the suspicious little fool tighter. _(She was alive, she was safe, alive, safe.)_ She was a goddess to the Dothraki. "They worship you. You lack faith in your men."

She shoved hard against his chest, twisting so that she practically threw herself out of his arms. He set her squirming body down, simmering resentment and then worry as she folded herself over her injured leg.

She looked at him fiercely. "I have full faith in my people to be what they _are,_ not what I wish them to be. _Your_ kind of faith keeps coming up with new ways to kill me."

Then she turned to one of the riders in the distance and whistled between her fingers. She raised her hand, and the Dothrakaan started trotting his horse toward them. While Jon brooded, the man stopped a respectful distance away and dismounted his horse. He led it to Dany, who made a little wheeze of pain as she swung up onto it from her injured leg rather than even show the weakness of mounting from the beast's off side.

She sat silently looking at Jon for a moment, face hard and jaw jutted, then seemed to soften. She pressed her lips together and said to the Dothrakaan, _"Hrazef ha mae akka."_

The warrior looked at her with a calculating expression, but nodded and whistled to the next nearest Dothrakaan. That man arrived in moments and, at Dany's word, offered his own horse to Jon. Before Jon could mount up, Dany was already leaving, picking her way through the dead bodies on her way back to Ser Jorah and Drogon, while her men followed along behind.


	8. One War Ends, Another Begins

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thousand thanks to anread for her incredible comments and generous beta reading! Her thoughtfulness and knowledge floors me, and I'm lucky to share this fandom with her.

Rhaegal's pain was like a soft, keening wail in his mind. Ghost's was worse. The moment Jon mounted up, the two, strangely similar calls in his mind pulled him out into the western edge of the battlefield, near where the Free Folk had made their stand. As the slow-falling snow dappled his borrowed horse's dun coat, he focused on reining the poor, tired beast through the mounds of bodies between him and his friends. The weary thud of her hooves and the sight of the endless, silent corpses helped him to not think about the brutal, life-giving rightness of Daenerys' kiss, which he still felt on his lips. 

As soon as he rounded the western corner of the castle, he spotted Rhaegal, humped like a vast, misplaced hillock, with Ghost leaning on him for warmth. He almost-smiled at the sight of them together, and kicked the anonymous Dothrakaan's weary mount to hurry over to them. She balked at the sight of the two great predators, though, so he let her stop, and swung down. He landed, careful of his ankle, rubbed her big neck for a moment, then tucked her reins under her saddle and pushed her in the direction of the castle. She trotted nervously away, and he limped his way toward his lads. 

The closer he got, the worse they looked. Rhaegal's great wings were rent in a dozen places, the holes red-rimmed and bleeding. Blood dripped slowly from hideous gouges over his ribs, and his eyelids were half-masted with pain. And Ghost, the companion of his soul, was missing most of an ear, and wore deep, bloody gouges on his muzzle and legs. As he got closer, Jon saw that the direwolf was also scalped of a patch of hide on one side, baring a wound that looked raw and pink in the frigid air. 

Jon started to jog, not able to reach them fast enough, and simply threw himself between them when he got close enough. When his hand touched Rhaegal's comforting heat and the direwolf's fur, he was swamped with the dragon's love and pain. 

_ Hurts, _ his dragon told him. _ Flame low. Blood weak. Brother gone. Ghost here. Jon? _

"I'm all right," Jon said as Ghost pushed his good shoulder into Jon's arm, accepting his caresses. "Thanks to you and your mother and Drogon."

Rhaegal whistled low and played back to Jon how the dragons and their mother had finally ended Viserion.

The horror of it rocked him. While Jon had been sprinting off after the Night King, Rhaegal was having the meat of his ribs chewed off by Viserion while rolling him like a lizard lion in a sea of the newly risen dead. Rhaegal had been trying to dislodge his dead brother when he heard Drogon shrieking in pain. While he and his mother were on the ground, hundreds of wights had piled onto Dany's dragon, stabbing their swords like automatons into the tiny spaces between his scales and ripping into his wings. In his agony and terror, Drogon had shaken Dany off, and she had only survived the fall because she'd landed on a heap of long-dead Free Folk, whose rotten furs cushioned her landing. Unbelievably, she had held the mental link with her children and shoved Drogon towards his struggling brothers. _ Bite the neck _ and _ take his fire, _she'd commanded, and against every instinct, they had. As wights clambered all over him, Drogon clamped his jaws around Viserion's spine, severing the rotting thing entirely, while Rhaegal disemboweled his brother with one rip of his hind leg, tugging lungs and guts through the already shredded belly. 

Viserion's body was reduced to a shambling derelict, headless, blind, and fireless, and Drogon finally bolted, shrieking into the sky. Rhaegal was still struggling to rip off the animated head chewing the flesh from his ribs while Ser Jorah joined Dany and spent his last breaths helping keep her alive. When Arya had destroyed the Night King, Rhaegal had simply lain down on the field to wait for Jon while Drogon came back and cared for their mother.

Jon leaned his body against Rhaegal, Ghost warming his other side, telling them both without words of his love and grief and respect.

* * *

Sansa wept to see him. 

When Jon stumbled back to the castle yard, she was standing outside the crypt door next to Bran, looking like the only neat and tidy thing in all of the North. Somehow, despite having been trapped underground with thousands of years worth of their raging dead, her black dress was clean, her hair was smooth, and only her expression was disarrayed. His sister was staring dazedly at the tens of thousands of dead mounded up, brows high, mouth open, slowly shaking her head in shocked negation. 

When she realized that the filth-covered soldier she was seeing was Jon, her face crumpled and she dashed toward him, like a red fox darting through rubbish. She threw herself at him, as she had at Castle Black, hard enough that he nearly fell backward into the puddled mess. She clung to him with soft arms, so tightly his bruises cried out in protest. 

"You're _ alive," _ she whispered, "The pack survived, we all survived, _ the North _ survived. You saved us, brother. You brought the armies here, all these _ people, _ Arya killed him but you protected our home--"

He held her up, bearing her weight gladly as she sniffled and poured out her heart with grateful nonsense. She needed to thank Dany, and Tormund, and Grey Worm, and Qhono, too, but for now he shushed her, and asked, "'You all right?"

She pulled away to look at him with her red eyes and shook her head _ no. _"We won't even be able to find all the wounded," she started, tears falling as she stared around her at the devastation. "Some of them are buried under corpses, I can hear them--" 

He squeezed her again reassuringly, too tired to find words, and she took a deep, shuddering breath. Slowly, she seemed to gather herself, then, and straightened her spine. She stepped back, tugged a lemon-verbena scented kerchief out of her sleeve, and wiped her face and nose.

"I'll gather the maesters from all the holdfasts and put them into the guard barracks," she said hollowly. "We'll turn it into an infirmary."

He nodded. Good. Thinking of duty would keep her sane. 

"You're the Lady of Winterfell," he reminded her. "Command people as you need them. I'll start gathering teams to bring in the wounded."

She sniffed and nodded, then gave him a familiarly imperious look and said, "And you'll come in to the maesters, as soon as I get them organized, to have your wounds cleansed. I won't have my brother getting an infection."

He almost-smiled, nodded as much as his sore neck would allow, and turned to go. 

"Jon," she called, stopping him. He turned. "Is... is your dragon all right?"

"He'll live," he said tiredly. "Both dragons will. Ghost, too."

She nodded solemnly, something a little bitter passing over her face, and said, "I'm glad. I'll send a maester for your animals when one has time."

He nodded, exhausted, and went to find bearers for the wounded.

* * *

The gathering of the corpses was the next thing. Once the surviving Dothraki riders had brought in the last of the injured who could be found, every able-bodied person was commandeered to sweep up remains and pile them into the dead carts. The deepening cold would slow the progress of rot, but perhaps two hundred thousand bodies lay scattered and awaiting pyres. Most of them lay on the vast empty plain around the keep and in grotesque drifts in the castle bailey, but the blue-eyed army had also crept into every crevice of the buildings as well--the library, bedchambers, pantries, the smithy, woodsheds, even the privies. Oldsters and the walking wounded checked all the bodies for signs of tribe or House, and even little children were tasked with picking up the bits and bobs of fleshless skeletons that had fallen apart when released from their evil aegis. 

Fighters of the North should’ve been sent home to be buried on their own soil, in family crypts and lichyards, but after facing an army of rotted ghouls, few wanted to think of their own people decaying, even safely underground. They would all be burned. Along with logging another section of the Wolfswood for the pyres, Jon ordered the dry, oily corpses of the long dead to be layered beneath those who had died in the battle. Jon had been afraid Dany would offer to have her children burn all the dead, and though it would've been a practical solution, he knew his bannermen would've taken it as a great offense.

Instead, she stayed with her own people, and he only heard of her orders through her men. That was how he learned that she sent her thousands of Dothraki camp followers to butcher the newly dead horses, taking the hides and the clean parts of the meat to dry. She had others gather up weapons. Those that could be linked to any Northern house were placed in one pile for his own people to sort, while her people took away the far vaster pile of the weapons of the anonymous ghouls. She also had every arakh, spear, sword, and dagger that had fallen from one of her own fighters' hands laid reverently into one of a long line of carts, and as the sun was going down in a blaze of orange and pink, he stepped out onto the plain for some fresh air and saw her standing alone beside the vehicles, staring mutely at the vast heaps of weapons. 

When night fell and it was time to burn the dead, she did so by the main gates with the rest of the living. As soon as they were ash, though, she walked out with her living armies to the battlefield. There, she called her slow-moving children to limp over to her, and had them burn Viserion's corpse. Jon felt Rhaegal's mourning, but did not want to add to the Queen's with his presence, so he sat on a high parapet, Ghost at his side, and watched as the fire and smoke rose like a pillar into the sky. He touched his dragon with his mind, sending reassurance and shared grief for the one who had died to save him. Rhaegal felt almost tender as he and Drogon poured fire on their brother in their rite of cremation. When the flames died down, Her Grace herself helped load her son's fire-cleaned bones into a set of massive supply wayns. 

The night's meal came soon after. While the smallfolk ate tiredly, conversing quietly, the white-faced Queen sat far down the table in Ser Jorah's empty chair, and rarely looked above her untouched plate. His own men boxed in around him, gathering energy from the ale and relief, and it eased the ache when they started hailing him as a hero and dragonrider, and begging for his stories. Once in a while, he would glance past their shoulders to Dany with his blighted, longing eyes, and she always looked diaphanous with grief, and troublingly alone. Few of her people were in the hall, either because they were mourning with their own tribes or because Sansa had failed to invite them. Even Missandei had been seated down among the few Unsullied in the room. 

After the final course, when drink was being passed around more freely and Tormund was slapping backs and telling lies about how many dead giants he'd downed, Jon spotted Varys slipping into the room. The eunuch sidled up to the Queen and whispered to her as he passed a raven scroll into her hand. Jon hoped it was not bad news from the South. The queen unrolled the scroll, read it over, then shut her eyes, her whole body going tense and still. She breathed in silent repose for a few moments, opened her eyes to read the scroll again, then snapped it closed. She nodded at Varys, then left the table without a word, retrieving Tyrion, Missandei, and Grey Worm on her way out the door. She did not look back at him when she left.

* * *

The next morning, Jon awakened at dawn, his headache not as vicious as he'd expected. He'd gotten drunk, but not so much that he wouldn't be able to do his part in the grinding work ahead. After dressing, he went to the yard, which was strangely serene with its coating of new-fallen snow, the thousand shades of white covering the devastation below it. He'd gathered the castle builders to him, so they could all assess the damage to the structures right away, to see what was in danger of collapsing, and noting what could and must be repaired first. As he went from place to place with the men, talking about what stood strong, what had fallen, and what was deceptively weakened, he couldn't help but glance at the King's Tower now and again. Four Unsullied guards, not Dothraki for once, were posted at its door, and a surprising number of people went in and out of it as the sun crept into the sky. First, Missandei, carrying what looked to be that same covered wooden bowl. Then, the maester, in and out a few times with arms stacked full of scrolls. Gilly, of all people, went in, and some elderly women who had done sewing for Lady Catelyn. A rider wearing the livery of White Harbor arrived and went straight up the stairs, carrying a long, narrow box. A few minutes later, he rode away, empty-handed. Near noon, Tyrion dragged himself up there, and a while later, the sound of raised voices floated out through the glass windows of the Queen's rooms.

Moments later, two of the Unsullied guards went into the room and came out escorting a despondent-looking dwarf. What in the hells had Tyrion done? One soldier took the Lannister back toward the main guest quarters, and the other jogged to the castle gates, called out a few words in his language, and a small company of his black-armored fellows dropped their various tasks and followed him at a run to their stabling area. 

Jon felt himself heat with irritation that something requiring a company of guards was going on in his home and Dany had not sent someone to tell him. Seconds later, though, Jon looked up from under the smithy's damaged tool racks to see Grey Worm approaching him.

He nodded to the man, whose full lips were pressed into an angry line. 

"You have prisoner cells?" the commander asked, notably not greeting him.

This really wasn't good. His scarred hand itched for Longclaw's pommel. "Aye, a few. What's happened?"

"Queen Daenerys take two prisoners. Where cells?"

"Beside the Guards' Hall. Is she imprisoning her Hand?" he asked, thinking of her talk of treachery, and her fierce grief. Who knew what would make sense to her right now?

"No," Grey Worm said flatly and turned to go.

"I need to know who it is, and what crime they've committed in my lands" Jon warned, slowing him. "If it's Northerners, I'll have to preside over a trial." 

"Southrons. No trial," the Unsullied grunted, and continued at a march.

Grey Worm obviously wasn't going to tell him anything useful, so Jon bade goodbye to the builders and made his way to Daenerys' door. 

He didn't know any of these guards, nor whether they spoke the Common Tongue. At the sight of him, one of them spoke through the door in Valyrian. The Queen called back in the same language a moment later, and he heard her say in the Common Tongue, "Leave me."

Varys, some Unsullied, and a few other of her people filed out, not one looking him in the eye except Missandei, who nodded to him with the same sadness he'd seen on her face lately. He nodded back, regretful that even the eminently even-tempered woman was so unhappy, and then went in. 

Dany was seated at her desk, exhausted-looking but eyes clear and face calm, spine ramrod straight, despite all. It was surprising, and a relief, after all the emotion of the past days, to see her at peace. An odd collection of things sat on the desk in front of her: Tyrion's silver Badge of the Hand, an enormous bow, unstrung, of what looked to be ebony wood that had been polished to an impossible mirror shine, a bolt of yellow silk with suns woven into the cloth, and a beautiful bridle with a golden rose medallion on the browband. Carelessly laid on the desk was a piece of parchment closely written with the chicken-scratch of someone barely literate. The fine white dress and the cloak were, of course, gone from beside the hearth.

As he glanced down, he didn't mean to spy, but he couldn't help but read a few scraps of the message on the parchment. 

_ Bushals of barlie _

_ remind you of _

_ wouldif kept it but I cant draw the damned thing. _

_ always come back here and marry me _

_ Marry me? _

He tore his gaze away from her private letter and forced his mind from what he'd read. Whoever had written that thing was not here. 

He said without preamble, "What's happened?"

She nodded calmly for him to sit, and he took the chair across from her. "Tyrion finally made a mistake that I cannot attribute to bad luck or too good of a heart."

It was too bad. He liked the little man and hoped it wasn't too serious.

"Should I know what it is?" he asked. "Grey Worm says you've got prisoners. I'll need to know why I'm locking people up."

She said with perfect, incomprehensible calm, "Tyrion and Ser Jaime have been harboring an assassin hired by Cersei Lannister--"

Jon's blood went cold, then raging hot. "I'll have their heads, I swear it," he broke in. 

_ "My Lord," _she chastened, her gentle formality making him want to strike something. "The assassin was not for me, or at least he claimed not. She hired a former sellsword guard of Tyrion's to ride up here and kill both her brothers."

"Them and not you?" he asked. "It makes no sense." 

"Apparently her desire for petty vengeance is greater than her desire to keep her own crown," she said. She cooly picked up the Hand badge and dropped it into a drawer. "Tyrion did claim once that Lannisters love to kill each other."

"Why in the Hells did he keep it from you?" 

She shook her head mildly. She was so much less expressive now. She'd gone back to being _ regal _with him. 

"He had apparently been in the habit of awarding this man extravagant things to keep him from betraying him, and this time, Tyrion and Ser Jaime promised him Highgarden."

_ "Highgarden?" _

"Highgarden," she affirmed, as if she were just mildly unimpressed. "I have stripped Tyrion of office and confined him to quarters. I may eventually give him the chance to earn back my good graces, but he will never again wear his badge. His brother, though, was already on the thinnest possible ice with me, and he also held this information from me within days of promising loyalty. He and the assassin can enjoy each other's company behind bars, and when they have sat in the cold long enough, they will either give me every groat of information they can recall about Cersei and the Red Keep's security, or they will burn."

"You don't have to do that," he said instantly. "I'll swing the sword it if it must be done."

She looked at him with eyes that seemed to suddenly hold far more than she was saying. "Did you not tell me that in the North, the man who passes the sentence should swing the sword? Drogon is my sword."

He remembered exactly when he'd told her that. They'd been leaning on the rail of her ship on the second day at sea, holding hands under the cover of their cloaks. They'd been talking about Northern versus Essosi ideas of justice, idle talk they could afford in that precious space of happiness they'd had together, now gone forever.

"Still," he insisted, thinking of knives in the dark, "Northerners might revolt or desert if they see you use fire on prisoners. They have too many bad memories. Whoever leaves, you'll never get them back for the march South, and other Houses will try to follow."

She closed her eyes for a moment, then reluctantly nodded. "Of course." Then she reached out for the edge of the silk and started fiddling with it. "I need more Westerosi advisors, people who keep in mind context like that, and understand customs I'm unfamiliar with. One person I would like to have help me is... Ser Davos. Would you allow it?"

He startled. He'd almost thought she'd ask for _ him, _but of course not. Not anymore. "It will be up to him, but he will not say no," he told her.

She looked reluctantly away, and reached for the parchment, folding and unfolding it slowly in her hands. "On that note, you should know that I will have a shipment and visitors coming soon. While the armies and dragons heal, I'm planning to form my Small Council and more alliances."

He looked up sharply at that. "What kind of alliances?" 

She met his gaze, unruffled as a sheet of ice. "Whatever kind I can make. My cities in the East are recovering their economies, and my governor in the Bay of Dragons sent me gold and three ships full of goods collected as taxes. Along with them come the heirs to Dorne and Highgarden. They had both been in the far East when the War of the Five Kings broke out, and they rode along to bend the knee and join my campaign."

Far easier men than he'd been, it sounded like. He couldn't help but ask, "Are these their gifts?"

One dark brow flickered up at his insolence for asking such a thing, but she nodded calmly. "The bridle and silk, yes. The bow is mine."

His own eyebrows shot up. "It's bigger than you are."

She quirked her lips in something that resembled humor, but wasn't. "It was Drogo's, a gift from our wedding that I left in Meereen for safekeeping. Daario didn't send it to me so I could shoot it. He thought he'd kindly remind me of who I am in this land of sheep and wolves." She stroked the bow's unblemished black edge. "It's dragonbone, you know. Dragon bone, cured by dragon fire, makes the finest bows in the world. It weighs practically nothing, but it can shoot twice as far as a yew bow in the same hands. And it lasts for centuries."

"Did he think you forgot you are blood of the dragon?" Jon asked, scoffing.

"No," she said, tone thoughtful. "He reminded me that this powerful weapon must bend if it's to be of use, but only with single-minded intention."

"Doesn't sound necessary to remind you of that." 

"No," she disagreed, and took the bow into her hands, running her thumb gently along the carvings on the grip. For a moment, she was just Dany again, pensive and soft, not the cold monarch who kept slipping into her skin. She looked down wistfully at the bow and said, "It's only now that I'm remembering the queen I was in Essos. When I was freeing slaves, I used every skill and weapon at my disposal, and did not flinch from it. My... first impressions of Westeros made me imagine that here I could be different, that it would not require me to... give myself up in the same ways. But my old friend reminded me that I must be the queen I can be, not the woman I wish to be, or I will not have these kingdoms as they are."

He could only guess at what she really meant, but her sadness made him ache. "I wish I could spare you that, Dany."

She looked up sharply at her pet name, her expression shuttering as she shook off the past. She stood. "Thank you for your time, My Lord. Grey Worm will keep you informed about the status of my prisoners."

He stood up to go. He fucking hated this down to his own wolfish bones. 


	9. Intrigue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Over the next few days, Dany--his Dany and Queen Daenerys Stormborn both--began to disquietingly vanish, each in their own way. Jon missed them both so much he ached. The only hours he saw her were on the rare nights when she did attend supper, when she rarely spoke more than a greeting to him, and in informal gatherings that had started to condense around her like dew on a flower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A million more thanks to my wonderful beta, anread, who helps me fill in plot holes before the trolls have a chance to send me hate mail about them. Seriously, I enjoy her thoughtfulness, company, and discerning mind more than I can possibly express.

Davos cornered him the next morning, not long after the sun rose. Jon had just rung a solid blow on Lady--no, _ Ser _Brienne's back plate in the otherwise-empty training yard when he saw his former Hand stop, looking purposeful, just outside their ring. She'd chased him well around the dirt circle, and he was sweating down the back of his undertunic and puffing frost-white breath like a dragon. As she spun about with an annoyed snarl on her lips, she tracked Jon's gaze and spotted the Onion Knight. She immediately lowered her black training blade and said hastily, "I thank you for the match, My Lord. I see you have business to attend to. I'll leave you to it."

He raised his eyebrows that she was so eager to leave, but said, "Thank you. Again soon?"

She nodded, dropped her sword into the rack with the dull ring of potmetal, and arrowed back in the direction of the guard barracks, where she'd come from in the dark when they'd met up to spar.

Jon walked more slowly than she had to replace his blunted blade and then strap his Valyrian steel to his hip. He had barely spoken with Ser Davos since he'd learned of his parents and broken his betrothal, and he wasn't eager to talk to someone so honest, and decent, and bloody _savvy_ right now. The man had always been a comfort to him, a light of simple wisdom in the churning dark of a too-complicated world, but now he was surely here to talk of Daenerys, and the old knight’s eyes suddenly seemed over-sharp.

When his black leather swordbelt was knotted just right, and his gauntlets straightened, and a drink of water had filled his throat from the ladle hung from the bucket, Jon finally turned around. Davos was standing right beside him. 

The old man began conversationally, "Are you aware that I've never once seen you go willingly unarmed or unarmored since the hour you left Castle Black? Not first thing in the morning, not at supper amongst your own men, not even aboard a ship containing none but your soldiers and allies?"

"Sounds likely," Jon grunted, wondering where he was going with this, whether he was concluding something about Jon’s warrior father or paranoid royal grandfather, or puzzling out the mystery of his dragonriding.

"Then perhaps you understand," Davos continued, "that I know you carry a great deal on your young shoulders, along with said arms and armor." He looked down at Jon with a cocked head, like a particularly intelligent raven. "You're carrying enough, son. I'm not going to lay my judgment on you as well." 

Jon's restless mind stopped pawing for answers and just... unclenched. Davos wasn’t sniffing about for conspiracy and damaging secrets. He wasn't probing. It wasn’t in him. Jon suddenly longed to tell the man everything, ask for his help. Instead, he just waited cautiously to hear what his friend had to say.

Davos went on, "You know how I felt about your match, but a man has a certain look about him when his mind can be changed, and you don't have it. You haven't since the moment you announced you'd not be marryin' her, otherwise I'd have had words to say about it. Now, you know I trust you. I chose you when all hope was lost, and I still would choose you. Do you want me to advise Queen Daenerys or no?"

"Aye," Jon instantly said. "She's done nothing wrong. She's as good and honorable as she seems. More."

The old knight nodded and said, "I'll gladly do it, then. I trust that young woman almost as much as I do you, and her plans are good. I just wish I could be in the business of serving you both at the same time." 

Jon nodded mutely. He did too, beyond all things.

* * *

  
  
Over the next few days, Dany--his Dany and Queen Daenerys Stormborn both--began to disquietingly vanish, each in their own way. Jon missed them both so much he ached.

Since it would be weeks before the troops and dragons were ready to campaign south, she had suspended most of the war councils that were his only real excuse to see her, outside of meals. Then, she nigh completely stopped eating in the Great Hall. While he was taking meals of fragile geniality with his kin and men, she was hosting a Northern noble or three at a time in her rooms, chaperoned by advisors and guards. The conversation must've been relatively amiable, because when they left, those gentles generally became quieter in their grousing about her in the days that followed. Even the most peevish, like Bronze Yohn Royce and Lady Coldfield, who were some of the first she brought to her rooms, started declining to make the most obvious barbs about her, even when conversation afforded it. Some, like Lord Manderly, seemed to positively warm toward her, and would glare daggers at her critics when the muttering about "foreign queens and their savages" began.

When she did appear outdoors, she was never still enough for him to casually approach her as he worked with his own men and hers on the castle's restoration. She went straight to her camps, or the dragons, or the forge, or even to the winter town, usually with a handful of followers who carried parcels in hand. What he could see of her moved his heart in strange ways. She had evidently hired women to make her new dresses in the Northern style, with long, heavy skirts, high collars, and a bit of silk showing at the wrists and neck. Somehow, they were cleverly sewn to look softer than they did on other ladies, though, with swirling skirts and sleeves, and quite a bit of skin showing at the collarbone, as if it were always springtime where she walked. The only concessions she made to practicality were that the skirts were split in front to allow riding, and she wore her ever-present Dothraki breeches and boots under it all. She was like an oyster shucked out of the hard, sharp lines of her Dragonstone finery, leaving behind a soft, sweet-looking Northern gentlewoman, unique and alluringly adult, but still flush with maidenhood. In short, she had made herself look like yet another version of the highborn lady a bastard called Snow could never hope to be near.

The only hours he saw her sitting still were on the rare nights when she did attend supper, when she rarely spoke more than a greeting to him, and in informal gatherings that had started to condense around her like dew on a flower.   
  
One night, he was dragging himself back late from conferring--and drinking--with Davos and Tormund when he heard raucous laughter in the great hall. He stepped through the left-ajar door and into the shadows in the back of the room. The Queen sat like a bright beacon at one of the low tables, wearing a soft, lovely dress of deep violet that made her eyes brighter even in the candlelight, and her curled, loose hair shone like moonlight. The fur on the shoulders of her cloak was the thickest, densest sable, rivaling the mantle Robert Baratheon wore on his own visit. Despite her hair and coloring, she didn't look a bit like a dragonrider--she looked like a stunning Northern noblewoman at her leisure, relaxing at home with her adoring family. She was also absolutely surrounded by Northern noblemen--at least a dozen--who, at her graceful hand gesture, drank as one from little silver cups, then whooped and shuddered with grins on their stupid faces. 

She sipped knowingly at her own cup and asked from behind her lashes, "And how do you like the firewine, my lords?"

"It has a fierce bite to it, but it's sweet as mead!" jowly Lord Manderly exclaimed.

"Like many things imported from the East," she said, with the most blamelessly ladylike hint of a smirk. 

Another round of tipsy laughter and cheers shook the room. 

"The Dragon Queen!"

"Queen Daenerys!"

"The Khaleezi of the Grass Ocean!"

"Chain Breaker!"

She nodded, smiling, at all the titles, even the butchered ones, raising her glass to each lord in turn.

Jon wanted to walk in and sweep all the lords out of the room and demand to know what in the Hells she was doing, drinking and simpering with a roomful of potentially hostile men. She looked as gracious and insipid as a princess from one of Sansa's childhood storybooks, and nothing at all like the fierce, unyielding bitch who'd received him at Dragonstone, then saved his life and heart.

A slightly swaying Devon Coldfield, Lady Coldfield's heir, called out, "You have many impressive titles, Your Grace. What is the truth of why you are called the Unburnt?" 

Jon knew these stories. They made her eyes go dark and sad, and her jaw set hard when she told of her murdered husband in one and being whipped by Qhono on the way to Vaes Dothrak in the other. They both ended the same, with terrifying, goddess-like triumph. But now, the warrior woman who'd told him those stories with her mussed head tucked under his still-sweaty shoulder didn't appear. 

Instead, the wax doll that had replaced her just laughed musically. "Because, my good Ser, it is truth. I am the true blood of the dragon, and dragons cannot be harmed by fire." 

The room went silent, and one of the brasher lords snorted. The room erupted in laughter and friendly jibes. She leaned toward one of her guards, a Westerosi soldier who usually marched for House Karstark, Jon was surprised to see, and spoke a few words. The armored man went around to the hearth, where the fireplace tools sat in their rack. He bent low with the tongs and pulled a glowing coal the size of a bite of meat from the fire.

Daenerys leaned back in her chair and waited for the man to come to her. She smilingly said, "I take it you noble gentlemen require a demonstration?" 

"Your Grace," young Lord Wibberley stuttered, "Surely--"

The man broke off when she lifted her dainty hand out, palm up. The guard, eyes wide and a little terrified looking, lifted the glowing coal above her hand, and the room went silent. 

She said, "Imagine, good sirs, that this was your enemy, burning to defeat you, untouchably powerful. Wouldn't it be useful to have a lady about who can do this?" She smiled sweetly at her guard and plucked the glowing coal from the tongs with her bare fingers. 

To a man, the lords gasped, while "Good Gods!" rang about the room in a dozen voices. Dany just laughed, turning the coal as if it were an orange jewel. 

Then she closed her little fist. The coal audibly hissed against her soft skin and she squeezed until her knuckles whitened. Then she opened her fingers like the petals of a flower. The coal in her hand was grey and dead and half crumbled from her grip. She dropped it carelessly onto a plate. 

"Don't you all look forward to seeing Cersei Lannister snuffed out thus, and justice bought for the North?" she asked, wiping her hand casually on one of the napkins. At the gobsmacked look of her audience, her face softened, she clapped twice, and said winsomely, "Now, gentlemen, enough about our foolish enemies. I've taught you to drink firewine--won't you all teach me to drink ale?"

There was silence in the room and Jon thought for a horrified moment that she'd completely misjudged the men around her, and the Northern lords would draw their blades and scream that she was a witch. Then, Lord Wibberley--brainless, handsome, tall Lord Wibberley--stood and yelled, "Ale for Queen Daenerys, the Unburned!"

As one man, the room shouted, "Ale for the Queen!" and Her Grace was mobbed by men offering her their flagons.

Jon turned to go, breath heavy in his chest. He spun around to nearly crash into Lord Varys, who had been standing silently behind him, watching him watch the Queen's little game play out.

"Pardon me, my Lord," the eunuch said. "I did not think you would leave so soon. There is so much to see."

He was so rattled that he blurted, "I can't stand to watch it."

Varys raised a plucked eyebrow at him. "What, flirtation? I take it you've never seen Her Grace use womanly wiles to change the heart of a truculent man, then. I suppose she never did think to use such attitudes on you--you seemed too worthy, either as an adversary or ally, I'm sure. It would not have mattered which, to her." He pursed his lips and said dismissively, "These men, of course, have a rather different status."

Jon muttered, "It's not honorable."

The spymaster raised an eyebrow at him, amused. "What, you think she performs whore's tricks?"

Jon snarled, "Don't speak of her with those words!"

The Spider shrugged and said mildly, "Well, what is a whore in Westeros, after all, but a woman who is adored in private and despised in public?" 

Jon's lungs seized up in disgusted protest, but the eunuch still pushed. "You would have her blunt one of her sharpest weapons in the war for her kingdoms, after you yourself cast that weapon aside? I didn't think you a naive fellow. Her charm is a malleable thing, and one you cannot expect to remain reserved for, well, one such as yourself."

The comment struck Jon like an arrow, pushing angry, mortified heat to every extremity. He refrained from slamming the man against the wall on his way around him. By the time he'd made it into the cold yard on the way to his own rooms, the truth had sunk its claws into him. Why should it matter who she flirted with? She clearly no longer loved him, to be able to do such things among other men, and who was he to stand in her way?

* * *

  
  
Jon's morning routine became much the same every day. He'd waken before dawn, eat with his siblings, then go to the yard to spar, or talk with the builders, or heave rubble into carts alongside his men. As the sky lightened, he'd secretly keep eyes on the King's Tower, waiting for her door to open and some high-ranking Northern lord to emerge, looking ruffled and smug. It was bitter, and stupid, and he had no rights at all to such information about the Queen's doings, but the Gods knew he was not a rational man anymore.

The only thing that happened at such times every day was Missandei quietly emerging from her ground-floor room, approaching a clean bank of snow, and scooping some into the covered wooden bowl. She'd go to the Queen's door, be let in by the Unsullied guards without hesitation, and leave a good while later, bowl empty. Later, the Queen's other people, and servants or local smallfolk would come up, bearing breakfast trays, scrolls, and mysterious bundles and crates. None stayed long in the mornings, except for her advisors, Gilly, and sometimes Arya, who could all be with the Queen for some hours. 

Once, Gilly caught him looking up at the Tower on her way in, and gave him a glance so baleful it could've hexed him. That afternoon he was planning to meet with Sam anyway, about masonry techniques that were described in the libraries, so before they got started, Jon dove in and asked. 

"Sam, have I done something to offend Gilly? I saw her this morning and she looked like she wanted to spit in my eye." 

Sam gave a sad little huff and glanced around their oddly empty, untidy little chamber. He said, "I think she already spit in my soup. She's packed up herself and Little Sam and they're sleeping with some of the chambermaids." 

"You're sleeping apart?" Jon asked with great surprise. It was a disturbing thought. From practically the moment they'd met at Craster's Keep, Gilly had clung to Sam for the savior he was to her.

His Brother said ruefully, "She's very angry at the both of us for you breaking off with Daenerys, and um, the uh, well, _ reasons." _

"Why's she angry with _ you?" _Jon asked, perplexed. "You were just the bearer of bad news."

Sam brushed uncomfortably at the belly of his robe, working at a dot of spilled food instead of looking him in the eye. "When I informed her of what most people thought of incest, she asked me what _ I _thought of incest, and I told her, of course." He looked up forlornly. "I said it very badly, and now she thinks I must think she and Little Sam are, well, monsters, and abominations before the Gods and men." He sighed and said, "D'you know that she is Craster's granddaughter as well as being his daughter and once his wife? So Little Sam has three generations of the man's blood in him. It's amazing that he's turning out so well."

Jon felt his shoulders slump at the mention of abominations, and Gods, and all the other things that he never wished to hear of again. "I'm very sorry, Sam."

"She also didn't like that I was so angry about my brother's death," Sam added. "They were very unwelcoming to her, you know, he and my father. Dickon was not cruel, of course, but, well. It wasn't good. And she didn't like how he never defended me to Father, and just enjoyed being favored son. It wasn't kind of him, but who could blame him?"

Jon blinked, but didn't hesitate to say, "I could. Didn't I defend you at Castle Black, with all our Brothers?"

Sam chuckled nervously and waved his hand. "Well, you were a born hero, future dragonrider and all! Of course _ you'd--" _

"Robb wasn't," Jon said instantly. Poor Sam. 

"How's that?" his friend asked, puzzled.

"My brother Robb. He was the heir and favored son, but he defended me all the time, even to his mother. Arya did too, even more."

"Oh. Well, that was good of them." Sam fidgeted in his seat, looking distinctly uncomfortable, as if he'd never thought about how other siblings acted.

"Don't you think you would have done the same for Dickon?" Jon pressed.

"Oh, well, I suppose," Sam shrugged, reddening. "But maybe I wouldn't have understood. Maybe I would've blamed him for being a bad son, if he were me. If I were him. You know what I mean."

"I doubt it."

Sam looked sheepish, then a little riled. "You know what's most unfair about it? Gilly says that I'm so angry about Daenerys killing my father and brother because the Queen's a woman! Which is ridiculous. She has a bit of a point, that my father did _ technically _ commit a kind of treason, and my brother insisted on standing with him. She says, _ Jon chopped off Ser Janos' head while he was begging for mercy, isn't that worse than killing a man who insists on being killed? _But he was my brother, Jon. He was a sweet boy and not a bad man. He would've been a good lord."

Jon looked sadly at his friend. "Of course he would've, Sam."

"And," Sam said, looking at the floor, "My father might've changed, over time. Many men do when they have grandsons. And now, well, there will be no chance of that."

Jon thought of a younger Sam, of his shivering bulk and vulnerable gaze as he stood atop the Wall, telling how his father had given him the choice of banishment or death. How kind Sam was, how hungry he was to be friends. Sam looked at him with those same gentle, miserable eyes. Jon didn't have the heart to say anything but, "Aye, he might've, Sam. Maybe."


	10. Knowledge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Secrets are revealed, and visitors arrive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's such a pleasure to post this stuff after anread has used her beta superpowers to clean up the messes before you get to them. Thank you, anread, for everything you bring to my life!

It was late morning, time to take on the next unpleasant task in another half-torturous day, and Jon was brooding on the meeting he was about to have with his sisters. He'd decided to tell the both of them the truth of his lineage, something he was not looking forward to.

Arya, cold-blooded little pragmatist though she'd become, was still, quietly, his ally in all things, and had become something of a companion to the Queen. She kept her own secrets so close that he knew she would keep theirs safe, and could not see him as too different. 

Telling Sansa had given him long pause. He hadn't forgotten Her Grace's warning, and knew she'd been right about Sansa's intentions on the disastrous night when she'd forbade him from claiming his Houses openly. But Sansa had changed in the days since she'd emerged from the crypts to see the reality of what he, Arya, and the Queen had defended her from. She'd been kinder to him, even thoughtful. She often sought him out to ask his opinion or leave for some project, though the castle was hers by right. He was fully her family now, her pack. He didn't want to cut her out as Lord Stark had cut out her mother, or separate her once more from Arya. The two young women seemed almost close of late, for the first time in their lives, sharing a secret language of meaningful glances and even meeting in Sansa's solar for private little talks almost every day. 

Her sarcasm still had a bite, but it had come to seem habit as much as weapon, lately. Perhaps she used it more often when talking about the Queen than anyone else, but her focus was far from the South. She was truly the Lady of Winterfell now. Her attentions were fixed on repairing their home and securing against the deep cold that edged further under their cloaks every day. After hard thought, he'd decided she would never release a secret that would endanger the North, and she would not break a vow to him if he asked it of her. 

Even if she didn't exactly like it, he would swear both his sisters to secrecy, they would live with it, and the secret would no longer be on his shoulders alone. If he could no longer know Dany, could no longer exist in a warm little world of ease and truth with her, he would at least be known by his sisters. 

He arrived at Sansa's solar a bit before the time he'd agreed to meet them there to share news, and stepped inside, needing to get the stench of the spilled blood in the corridors out of his nose. Behind the door was a shelf of books, and he idly picked up one with fine paintings in it to have a bit of distraction. Soft footsteps tapped down the corridor outside, and he heard his sisters pause beyond the door, arguing quietly.

"...can start doing your own spying, Lady Littlefinger." 

"How can you call me that?" Sansa hissed, and pressed the handle. _ "Everything _ I do has been for _ our family--" _

"You think--"

Jon pulled the door open. Sansa stood shocked with her hand still out in front of her, where it had rested on the latch. 

"What're you talking about?" he asked. 

"What are _ you _ doing _ here?" _she retorted and swept into the room with a rustle of thick skirts. "You're supposed to be out training little boys to shoot arrows at Southrons right now."

"We were done," he said flatly, and let it drop. The war would not last forever, and she would get tired of whinging about the Queen's doings soon enough.

Arya tipped her chin at him in friendly acknowledgment. He noticed a small, livid bruise on her neck. 

He took gentle hold of her head and tilted it for a better look.  
  
"Who got that shot on you?" he asked. In watching Arya spar, he hadn't seen anyone yet who could make a head blow on her. 

Sansa rolled her eyes and made a disgusted sound. "It's not from a blow, Jon." He looked at her blankly. "The _ opposite." _

He was still puzzling that out when Arya said, "Speaking of, what's the Queen doing with all those weapons? The forge is full of them being melted down, and Gendry won't let me in."

_ Speaking of... Gendry? _ Seven buggering Hells, Gendry was courting her, or--? _ Marking _ his baby sister? How had he missed that?

_ Right dolt I am. _

He winced, not wanting to think about such things _ at all. _ The smith was a damned good man, but he was still a man, and a bastard after his highborn sister... and now they'd have to have _ words... _

Finally, he warned, "I don't know what she's doing with the steel, but we're going to talk about that smith, later."

Arya's amusement flickered so fast across her face it almost didn't exist. Almost.

"So," Sansa said, taking the second-best chair in the room and gesturing for him to take the best. "What news? Has she decided when she's going to drag us south?"

"No," he said, leaving the dig alone. "I need to tell you something important, and it must be kept secret."

They both came to full attention at that. "You must swear that you will not tell it," he emphasized. They _ must _agree.

"Tell _ what?" _Sansa asked. "You want me to swear about something that I don't even know? Don't be ridiculous."

"You will nonetheless," he said gravely. 

Arya shrugged and nodded, dropping pointedly onto the bench where he and Dany had announced their betrothal. 

His red-headed sister sighed, looked at Arya with annoyance, and said, "Fine. I swear it."

He sat forward, leaning over his folded hands. "I have learned who my parents are," he started. "Ned Stark is not my father, but I am still your blood."

Both girls went still and silent, eyes apprehensive and alight with curiosity.

"My mother was Lyanna Stark, and my father--"

"Was Rhaegar Targaryen!" Arya burst in. "That's why you can ride dragons!" 

He nodded at his clever littlest sister. Sansa wasn't speaking, just sitting white-faced, mind seeming to churn behind her stricken blue eyes.

"There is more. Sam found evidence, and Bran backs it, that my parents were married. The prince set aside his lawful wife, and he married my mother in the light of the Seven. I have a name, and it is Aegon Targaryen." To finally speak the words to them was a painful relief, like lancing a boil.

The revelation seemed to knock both sisters back. 

Sansa took a trembling breath. "You are not our brother," she whispered. 

Jon's guts fell, and Arya turned on their sister ferociously. "Don't you say that! He’s our brother as much as Bran, as much as Rickon, or Robb!"

"No, that's not what I mean!" Sansa said in a rush and leaned avidly forward in her chair. "This changes _everything,_" she insisted, hectic spots rising on her cheeks**.** "Don't you see it?! You are the heir to the Iron Throne. Every man in the North would support your bid, and you could use your dragon and our armies to _take it._ You could marry me--"

"Fucking Hells!" Jon shouted, horrified down to his boots.

"Not _ that," _ she rattled on, "A political marriage only. You'd make Arya's children our heirs, and _ we would all be safe!" _

"You're mad," Arya said, her usually unflappable face wrought. "You've gone starkers."

"It solves all our problems!" Sansa cried and stood up to pace. "I would live here, you could even move the capitol here, you would be _ king!" _

"I don't bloody want to be king! I knelt!" he said.

"For a war that is _over!” _she cried, throwing her hands up. “Can't you see how this would free us all? I would never have to touch another man to carry on the bloodline--"

Arya interrupted, deadly calm tinged with disdain, "But you expect me to have children for you, like a bred dog?" 

Sansa looked at her disgustedly. "You're bedding Robert Baratheon's bastard. You're probably with child already. Jon will legitimize Gendry and make him a lord. It's time to stop playacting at--"

"You don't know me at all," Arya said, eyes flat as a viper's. "Or Gendry, or Jon, if you think one part of this absurd plan will work."

Jon could barely track all the bilious madness coming out of Sansa's mouth. "You've been my sister all my life, and you expect me to _ marry _you--"

"Gods, Jon, don't be a fool. If a king says he's marrying his cousin, no one will blink. Only people around Winterfell will tut and whisper, and when they see us keeping separate quarters--"

"You expect Jon to never love another woman?" Arya asked, her little mouth tight. "He'd never risk fathering a bastard." 

"He vowed that once already," Sansa replied tartly. "What's once more? Lust is grotesque, and _ stupid, _ and--"

He'd had enough. He unpeeled his clenched hands from the chair arms and stood glaring at this stranger in his sister's body. "I renounce my claim," he said fiercely. "I renounce it now, and I will renounce it to all men if word of this _ ever _ leaves this room, the Old Gods help you, Sansa. You have forgotten who I am, but I haven't. I'm no oathbreaker, and I won't betray the woman I love and the bloody rightful queen of the Seven Kingdoms just because you've forgotten what love and honor are." He leaned menacingly over her and swore, "And know this, sister: if _ anything _ happens to her, I will become king solely to take vengeance on every single soul who brought her down. Do I make myself clear?"

Sansa's face went from flushed with excitement to drained white. Her rosy mouth sagging in shock, she merely nodded.

Arya stood alongside him and quietly opened the door. He and Arya strode out, leaving Sansa mute behind them.

* * *

Jon could barely hold the wildfire in his guts from spewing out in a storm of words or blows. Arya walked quickly alongside him toward the castle gates, taking two steps to his longer ones. Ghost jogged up to accompany them, following along with a somberness that fitted the occasion. 

"Has she lost her bloody mind?!" he finally burst out, when they were far enough into the empty, scarred battlefield to not be heard. He stopped, and Ghost sat beside him, looking worried at his outburst. He ranted on, "From the moment I returned from the South she's been beyond help."

Arya looked at Ghost, then him, squinting a little against the flat noonday sun, Winterfell half-ruined behind her. "She's a mess. Like us."

He glared at her. "Like _ us? _ Would you break oaths and commit treason to put me on a throne I don't want?"

"No," she said evenly, "not if you didn't want it. But if you did?" She shrugged minutely.

"You can't be serious," he said, disbelieving such words. Ghost nosed his hand and whined.

She stood unmoving before him, framed by the tumbled wreckage of their home. "Sansa sees you for what you are, Jon. You're a leader. You don't like leading, but if someone made you a deck slave on a ship, you'd end up captain in a month. If you were a foot soldier, you'd become a general in a year. Most people who are like that are evil shits. You're good. I'm not anymore, and I'd do anything for you."

It was the longest string of words he'd heard her speak for weeks. He couldn't think about such things, about ruling, about--

"And what about Daenerys?" he said. "You would murder a good woman to raise me up?"

"I didn't know she was a good woman, before," she said, "Not for sure. I heard a lot of different things about her in Essos. Lots of people loved her. The loudest ones said she was a tyrant and a monster." She looked down at a stray finger bone on the ground between them, then away with a particular guilty slant of the eyelids he recognized from catching her in a thousand naughty girlhood acts. "

"What've you done?" he asked darkly.

She looked squarely into his face then. "I was spying on the Queen for Sansa."

The little looks between them, the daily talks she was having with Sansa... it wasn't closeness, it was _ conspiring. _ Jon realized how fully, grotesquely he'd miscalculated, yet again. What he had done to Dany? Would he have to choose between keeping alive Sansa or Dany? _ Arya _ or Dany? Ghost leaned against him, practically holding him up.

Jon said nothing, letting Arya expose herself.

She went on frankly, "I was supposed to find out why you'd broken off with her, and to find her weaknesses. I got her to trust me, I let her talk, and I listened to servants and her people." 

He gave her a glower that he'd learned from Father, to make her continue. 

Arya glanced into the distance, her gaze flitting behind him along the road. "Nobody let out why you dropped her. That was the hardest part to understand, because you're still in love with each other. She was obvious about the rest. She trusted the wrong people, and she got dragged about by her emotions. She used to be just like you."

"What d'you mean, _ used to be?" _

Arya nodded at the road. "Since the battle, she's changed."

Jon looked behind him just as Ghost let out a soft, rumbling growl. A retinue of fine people were riding along the road toward the castle, banners popping and flying in the breeze, a parade of bright colors and gorgeous horses. _ There _ \--the red, speared-sun sigil of House Martell, and _ there _ , the golden rose of House Tyrell. Ahead of the Sunspear flag rode a swarthy, elegant aristocrat in a yellow silk coat, laughing and gesturing at Winterfell from his ornate saddle. Under the Rose was a big, calm-looking young lord, red of hair and square of jaw, impressively armored, with a bloody _ eagle _ on his vast shoulder and a breathtaking palomino warhorse prancing under his arse. A dozen men followed them on the road, all in colorful quilted coats or tourney armor, and a pack of shining hounds jogged among the mounted Unsullied that made up their rear guard. And, square between the lords, on a dancing silver gelding, rode Queen Daenerys Targaryen, Rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, laughing merrily at the Dornishman's joke. She shone resplendent in her wedding dress, and her maiden cloak flew from her shoulders.


	11. The Heirs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Men arrive, and Tyrion talks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More thanks to anread, my wonderful beta. She's helping me solve problems that I simply couldn't get through on my own, while making this process far more exciting than I'd anticipated. Thank you, love!

Welcoming her guests, as the Warden of the North, was well nigh unbearable. But because he was a man and a Stark, he reminded himself, he would bear it. Not all the noblemen seemed unpleasant, but them standing about looking so pretty in his death-reeking keep, seeming so pleased to be in the presence of the dainty little maid who was supposed to be his warrior wife, made him want to invite them to join the late, great, army of the dead. Sansa seemed far easier with the prospect, using her best manners and loveliest smiles to greet each man with courtly words, standing beside Jon as if they'd not had great ill will between them just moments before.

Daenerys introduced the Dornishman first, naming him one Prince Quentyn of House Martell, Lord of Sunspear, cousin of the late Princes Doran and Oberyn Martell. 

"Lord Stark," he purred as he bowed mockingly low. "Our exquisite queen honors me with the introduction. I have heard many tales of your exploits. Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, savior of the Wildlings, King in the North, dragonrider, swordsman of renown. I have even heard from sailors in Braavos," he said, leaning in to speak _ sotto voce, _ "that you have faced death and won. I have recently been in Asshai, where such victories are not unheard of." Then he leaned back and smiled genially. "Perhaps on this visit you will join me in a flagon of my own vintage of strongwine, and we will face a little death together."

Jon managed the faintest of lip twitches, and some words of welcome, while Sansa curtseyed deeply and made some speech about the man's Watergardens. When she was done, the dandy introduced his coterie of slim-hipped, heavily armed men, each smoother, darker, and more eloquent than the last. To a man, they bowed deeply to Arya, calling her tosh like "Savior of the World," and "the Lady Nymeria reborn." 

The prince himself looked his baby sister up and down, in her boy's clothes and mannish hair, and said with a louche smirk, "If you tire of the North, know that you will always be welcome in my palace. In Dorne, we have great... _ appreciation... _for dangerous women."

Then the Queen introduced Lord Willas of House Tyrell, Lord of Highgarden--the real Lord of Highgarden, not Tyrion's mercenary friend--who was the Warden of the South. The man, who had handed his enormous bloody eagle off to an underling before he dismounted, surprisingly took up a long crutch and limped heavily on it to reach them. He was handsome, broad, and had a serious face that Jon grudgingly admitted to himself held no trace of smugness. 

"My Lord," the man said, "We all owe our lives to you and your family, as equally as to our mighty Queen. Your House's sacrifice humbles us, and it will be my everlasting regret that we were not present to fight alongside you in the battle. While I impose on your hospitality, I hope you will grant me an hour or two to tell me how my House can be of use to yours after the war for the kingdom ends." Jon was marginally warmer to him, and complimented his beasts, to the man's genuine-looking pleasure. 

When he was introduced to Sansa, something passed over his face, and she flushed an odd red, though her face stayed pleasant and steady. 

"My Lady Sansa," he said. "It is a great pleasure to finally meet you. I'm sure you've no reason to remember, but I heard much of your beauty, grace, and kindness from my grandmother in your early days in King's Landing." He glanced warmly at Daenerys beside him, and continued, "Though our paths have diverged since those days, it is my honor to finally meet you." 

Sansa curtseyed as deeply as a tall woman could, bending down like a wind-swept flower, and murmured something about being sorry that she couldn't offer him a more beautiful setting for his visit. 

"Surely, the scars of war cannot make a thing unbeautiful," he said evenly. "They only reveal the greater beauties of history and survival."

She seemed utterly flustered as he bowed over her hand as best he could with the crutch, and Jon noticed Daenerys watching the exchange with fierce-eyed interest.

Jon was enduring the rest of the Tyrell men's introductions while brooding about how he was now, at least officially, doubly outranked in his own home by men who made him compare unfavorably with a hunk of unbroken sod. Then, Lord Willas introduced a looming man with a headful of blond curls, who was named as Ser Adrien of House Thorne. Jon froze at the introduction, feeling his hackles rise. 

"Former Lord Commander," the man drawled. "You served in the Night's Watch with my uncle."

"Aye," said Jon dangerously. "I knew Ser Alliser. I knew him well."

"I greatly admired the man," Ser Adrien said, nose in the air. "Did you know he took the Black after the usurper's rebellion rather than betray Her Grace's family?"

"The Queen is fortunate to have such loyalty," Jon replied, forcing himself to keep his teeth unbared. 

"I look forward to serving Her Grace and all her line, now and forever," the man said, looking at Dany with something that should've been admiring, but stirred a feral warning in Jon's guts. 

There was a bellowing scream in the air, and the whole company of people instantly whipped around toward the gate. A shadow swept over the yard, and in a blast of wind, Rhaegal dropped from a low glide onto the crumbling wall beside the gatehouse, crushing the section of wall into a heap of rubble beneath his clawed feet. He swung his big head to Jon and roared with his stitched-up wings spread low. The shouting nobles barely managed to hold their panicked horses down, and the hounds yiped and cowered as if they were looking down the maw of the Hells themselves. 

Jon said with grim pleasure, "Excuse my dragon. He is unused to noble visitors." 

He was internally praising his friend for his magnificent timing when an earsplitting groan rumbled both the air and ground, and Drogon ran up behind Rhaegal with impacts that rattled Jon's teeth. The bigger dragon opened his jaws, spread his injured wings wide enough to blot out the sky, and screamed down at his brother. The smaller dragon instantly dropped his head in submission, grunting lowly, and Drogon herded him away with a series of angry shrieks.

Dany said coolly, "Fortunately, _ my _ dragon is _ not _ unused to noble visitors, and can keep any creature, even his relation, well in check." Then she smiled brightly. "Lady Sansa, if you would be so gracious as to show my esteemed bannermen to appropriate quarters, I'm sure they would like to rest. Prince Quentyn and Lord Willas will be joining me privately for supper."

* * *

Jon went straight to Tyrion. The man was likely the only person in the North who could tell him what he needed to know about these men who raised his hackles so. When he went to the man's door, a single Unsullied guard stood watch, as rigid and attentive in the dead-empty hallway as he likely had been on the battlefield. 

He allowed Jon to knock, and the sound was answered by, "Come in, unless you've come to kill me! If you have..." The pause went on, and on, then concluded with a roaring belch that Tormund would've admired. 

Jon cautiously swung the door open and found the little lord reclined on a long, grey couch, dressed only in tunic, trousers, and socks, holding a fat book and a golden goblet. He looked very, very drunk.

"Jon Snow!" he cried. "The other ruiner of our Queen's hopes! Have a drink with me. Her Grace has restricted my movements, but fortunately, not my access to wine." He suggestively swung his goblet in the direction of a flagon on the table. 

"It's still morning," Jon said, unimpressed.

"All the better to get a head start on our day, don't you think? After all, if we stay drunk enough, we might actually keep out of trouble." Then he peered blearily at Jon. "Too late for you, though, isn't it? The look on your enviably symmetrical face says trouble has already found you and had her way with you. Are you coming to me to get unfucked by her?"

The bit of humor eased something in Jon's chest, and he took one of the chairs at the table. "The Queen's visitors have arrived," he said.

Tyrion stared disapprovingly down into his glass. "Mmmmm. I was hoping you were going to start by telling me why you jilted the most beautiful and powerful woman in the world after falling wildly in love with her." He looked hard into Jon's eyes, suddenly seeming far less drunk than before. "Let's start with that."

"That is between the Queen and me," Jon said. "Don't ask again."

"That's what the Queen said as well. But is it, really?" Tyrion retorted. "Just between her and you? Because if the Queen's campaign fails, we're all fucked. Me, you, the North, the South, everyone who ever breathed a word against Cersei, and everyone who will have to endure her continued reign. First you were in love with Her Grace, then you took possession of her dragon, and then suddenly you were done with her. Now, the Dothraki are rumbling about whether they ought to be following _ you _ in the fight, not her."

Jon tugged off his right gauntlet and started working the old burn scars on his palm, to give himself something to do besides fester. 

"How is that possible?" he asked. "She told me on the battlefield that if her Dothraki saw her being carried that one of them could challenge her. I thought they were totally loyal to her."

"That's the Unsullied," Tyrion said. "The Dothraki follow strength alone. For thousands of years, they followed only men in battle--it was inconceivable that they would follow a woman. Then, Daenerys Stormborn conquered not only their own Khals, but death itself before them, and further solidified her position by riding a steed powerful beyond their wildest imaginings. Now, you, _ a man, _ who has also reputedly conquered death, have taken half her herd of dragons and broken your betrothal to her, but she does not kill you. By keeping your pretty hide alive, she flouts their customs in a manner that, to them, brings shame upon herself. This in turn shames the entire horde, some of whom were already displeased with her for bringing them to this cold scrap of wasteland where no one respects them. Now Varys tells me that the most displeased of them contend that they would be within their rights to kill her and open the door for you, the more powerful leader."

He went utterly cold at that. The fine little chamber suddenly seemed too small, and his skin pulled as he clenched his fists. He demanded, "How can I protect her?"

_ "Protect her?" _Tyrion snorted into his cup. "What a question!" He looked piercingly back up at Jon. "When her husband, the mighty Khal Drogo, died because of her mistakes, and most of his Khalasar abandoned her at the edge of the Red Wastes, do you know what she did next?"

Jon just looked at him with narrowed eyes, stretching the numb tissue of his scar, trying to avoid pulling the still-healing burns on the backs of his hands. 

Tyrion went on. "She gave life to three dragons." The man tipped his cup at Jon and went on. "And when those dragons were stolen from her by her only ally, with the help of her beloved handmaiden, do you know what she did then?" 

Jon shook his head minutely. He hadn't heard that particular story in the soft conversations they'd had in their bed. 

"She took back her dragons," Tyrion said pointedly, "doomed the former ally and the traitorous woman to a ghastly death, and sacked the man's estate. She used the plunder to buy her first ship and feed her people for months."

Jon couldn't help but grin a little at her audacity, brutal as the story was.

_ "And," _Tyrion went on, "When she was taken prisoner by the Great Circle of Khals and was sentenced to death by gang rape, do you know what she did?" 

All humor gone, Jon gritted his teeth at the thought. He knew _ that _ story. "I do."

Tyrion nodded at him. "Then you know she burned the Khals alive, walked out of the flames unharmed, and became the commander to every Dothraki Screamer of the Great Grass Sea. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

Jon threw his gloves on the table and gave in, reaching for a cup and the flagon. "Aye. That the Queen needs no protection from the likes of me."

"No, Jon Snow," Tyrion glared. "It's that you ought to be _thanking the gods_ that you already bent the knee."  
  
Tyrion threw back the dregs of his wine and gestured for more.

Jon's mouth was suddenly dry. "What are you saying, Lannister? That she's going to raze the North for vengeance on me?"

"Pffffft" Tyrion demurred. "Are you planning to betray her and not march South? No? Good. The North is her kingdom now. She doesn't waste her resources, or kill innocents, not as far as I've ever seen. She has a very ruthless sense of justice, but she's no monster."

Jon refilled the dwarf's cup and poured some into his own. He took a sip and winced. Too sweet. "Lucky for the both of us," he said.

"As you would say, _ aye, _" Tyrion said, "Now, I suppose you didn't come here for a scolding, much as you deserve one. What did you want to say about the Queen's visitors?"

"I need to know about them," Jon said flatly. 

Tyrion raised a quizzical eyebrow at him. "So have supper with them. Why come to a disgraced dwarf who can't even get out to spy properly?"

"Because you've probably met half of them, and if you don't know them, you know their Houses. What do they want here?"

"Well, I can tell you that they came to bend the knee, they're all single young men, and some of them have vast holdings that Queen Danaerys desperately needs to secure the realm. Surely you can't be so silly as to suspect that they don't have a very specific set of hopes?"

Jon wanted to pitch his shiny cup across the room, but settled for emptying it with a grimace, then refilling it to the rim. 

Instead of answering Tyrion's questions, he said, "One of them has history with Sansa. He said he’d had a reason to hear about her beauty, grace, and kindness."

"Her _ kindness... _ Ah, Lord Tyrell. Yes, I knew that would be a sore point. When Sansa's betrothal to Joffrey was broken, people started scrambling to snatch her up for themselves, the Tyrells, especially. Willas was the first person they attempted to betroth her to."

"She was disappointed, then?"

"Oh no--Sansa was the one who begged off. She was the eldest daughter of a Lord Paramount, a great beauty, and had just been betrothed to the King, as badly as that had turned out. Olenna Tyrell tried to set her up with her youngest’s only son, who was, in Sansa's mind, nothing but a second-tier, scholarly cripple of the advanced age of twenty-four, whom she'd never met. She didn't care that he'd been the most promising knight of his generation when he wrecked his ankle in a tourney. She held out for Ser Loras, the Gods rest his sword-swallowing soul, whom she saw only as the dashing young Knight of the Flowers and future Lord of Highgarden."

"Seemed like she likes Tyrell now," Jon said into his cup, and then admitted with little grace, "He seems all right." 

"Well, she ended up stuck with _me, _of course," Tyrion said ruefully, "and then sold to that little demon Ramsey, so I imagine her perspective has changed a bit." He took a thoughtful sip, swished it, swallowed, and added, "Lord Willas and I met any number of times before he left to go horse-buying in Essos. That was before the fall of his House of course, when he was well down the line of succession. Before the accident, he was a gallant lad, very concerned with all it meant to uphold his vows to protect the innocent, a reader, loved histories and poetry. Your sister rejected him not long after his future as a knight was lost, and I imagine that learning that he was now considered an undesirable by the beauteous, but desperate Lady Sansa--whom, I might add, was just the sort of girl he’d been taught to revere and protect--was part of the reason he fucked off to Essos.” He snorted and shook his head. “Lady Olenna was furious that he was unreachable when their House fell. She would've moved all seven Heavens and Hells to install him as king.” Tyrion stared nostalgically at the wall, as if he could see his elderly, waspish ally once again in it.  
  
“Willas takes after the best of her House, you know,” he added. “Lady Olenna, Willas, Margaery, even Loras. Fine minds and kind hearts, the latter of which usually trot just inches ahead of their delight in wealth and position." Tyrion thumped his head back on the couch and added, "I do hope Sansa doesn't get too attached to him. Lady Olenna might just get her wish yet." 

Jon upended his cup again. "What else should I know?"

Tyrion sniffed his wine and said, "Well, I can only say that you're lucky you bonded with Rhaegal when you did. The Martells intermarried with the Targaryens for generations, and Prince Quentyn has a great deal of dragon's blood. There's a good chance he could've become a rider. He may have ambitions to become one yet."

"What in the Hells do you mean?" Jon said. "There are only two dragons."

"I can't vouch for the man's character, for good or ill," the dwarf replied. "What I do know is that he's a warrior with great ambition, who spent much time in the East, where magic and poisons are equally common. He traveled here from Asshai, where the first dragons supposedly rose from the Shadowlands, and where Her Grace's dragon eggs were laid. I imagine that having heard of her dragons, he was quite interested in acquiring some of his own." Tyrion lifted an eyebrow at him. "Of course, it would be much quicker to take a dragon from a dead rider than to hatch and raise one's own, don't you think?"

The idea of that greasy, pretty bootlicker touching Rhaegal burned in Jon's half-drunk mind. The idea of him touching _ Dany _\--or hurting her, to get to Drogon... he had to push the thought away or he'd go mad with it.

Instead, he asked darkly, "And what about Ser Adrian Thorne?"

Tyrion frowned into his cup. "Don't know the man personally. Thorne... a House steadfastly loyal to the Targaryens during the rebellion. Strong warriors. Generally not stupid. Dour types. Banners of the Crownlands, not Highgarden, so I'm not sure why he would've been traveling with Ser Willas. That's about all I remember--" He stopped and squinted at Jon. "Ser Alliser Thorne, that vile bully at Castle Black--that's who you're thinking of. Ser Adrian is of his House, and related in some way." Then realization washed over Tyrion. "Bloody hells, he was one of the ones who did away with you, wasn't he?"

Jon stared at the crackling fire, nodded. 

"Well, I can see why that would make him an unwanted guest in your home, much less in Daenerys' company. I wouldn't let your bad blood with his uncle prejudice you against him, but still, it would give me the shivers."

"Aye," Jon said. "I don't like him. Not for his connections, and not for how he looks at the Queen."

Tyrion pursed his lips. "How does he look at her?"

Jon struggled for the words. "Like... he wants something from her."

"Well, that's a given," Tyrian said, swirling his cup. "Surely you've gotten used to that idea by now. People don't spend time with monarchs because they like them, not even ones as charming and lovely as Her Grace. Monarchy breeds sycophants. The path to the ruler is the only path to true power, and anyone who wants power in the Seven Kingdoms is going to find their way to Her Grace sometime in the next year, mark my words." Then he looked sadly at his feet. "Or, they'll find their way to the grave, as my sister will."

"About that," Jon said, looking at the dwarf and feeling suddenly less companionable.

Tyrion looked up guiltily. 

"What possessed you to hide the assassin your sister sent, and make him such an offer? You had to know it was madness," Jon said.

The half-man dropped his head back against the grey velvet cushions and looked at the ceiling. He sipped, tapped his fingers on his cup, and finally said, "Bronn saved my life many times, when I was friendless and surrounded by enemies, including my own family. His more... mercenary qualities were ones I came to welcome, because they ensured he would continue saving my wealthy little life when no one else cared to. I did, perhaps, let the situation get a bit out of hand."

"You offered him the richest lordship in the kingdom," Jon retorted.

Tyrion smirked sadly. "More than a bit out of hand, then? I _ was _ quite drunk when he showed up with his crossbow pointed at my chest."

Jon scowled. 

"Oh, all right!" the dwarf exclaimed. "It was ghastly judgment, and the Queen had every right to lock me up for it." He knocked back the rest of his drink and gestured for more. "Terror does queer things to a man's mind. How _ you've _managed after having all those knives shoved into you, I can't imagine."

Jon refilled Tyrion's cup and his own. "I did call my dragon down when Ser Adrian started goggling at Her Grace," he admitted.

Tyrion roared with laughter, tapped Jon's cup with his own, and they downed their drinks together.


	12. Another Gift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon contends with what Her Grace has brought to Winterfell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to continuously express love for my beta, anread. She's so sharp, and good with the lore. Every comment she makes on our draft makes me happy. Thank you, love.

Jon was still half a sheet to the wind when the long line of the Queen's wayns started rolling in after their journey from her ships, late that afternoon. The crowd of Unsullied who guarded each one parted only after the vehicle entered the castle gates, and then they joined a tight defensive ring around the outside of the yard. At the racket, the door to the Queen's rooms swung open, and Missandei strolled down the steps, holding in her hand the empty wooden bowl. She stepped into her own room in the bottom of the Tower and emerged empty handed. Grey Worm immediately peeled off from the group and approached her, handing her a large scroll. At the woman's blushing smile at her unlikely lover, Jon felt a familiar ache of loneliness, followed by a new wash of bitterness at the thought of the Queen.

Missandei briefly went on her toes to kiss the commander on the cheek, then turned to Jon, still carrying the look of love on her face as she walked to him. 

"Lord Jon," she greeted.

"My Lady. Quite a cargo," he replied, tipping his chin at the wagons. 

She nodded, and said, "Her Grace requests use of locked storage for her goods. Where may I direct the Queen's quartermaster to unload the wayns?"

Jon had a stupid, belligerent urge to see _ Her Grace _for himself. He was tired of whoever this Queen was, avoiding him and annoying him, and bringing things to his castle that were entirely unwanted. If she planned to use up his granary space and fill his armory with barrels of boiled sweets or somesuch, she could bloody well ask him herself. Basic courtesy and all. To the Lord. Of the Keep. Which he was not, but yes, the Warden of the North. And heir to the--

"I'll tell her myself."

Missandei frowned. "My Lord, that is unnecessary. I will direct the quartermaster as needed."

"It's... different places," Jon managed. "Several places. What're you storing?"

Missandei reluctantly handed him the scroll, looking like she was handing a bone to a dog who would surely try to steal the rest of the roast.

5,000 bushels of barley

2,500 bushels of wheat

2,500 bushels of onions

2,500 bushels of apples...

Well, for fuck's sake, something he'd learned as a steward in the Watch was actually useful.

"See?" he said, "Can't store apples and onions together. Makes 'em rot. I'll discuss it with Queen Daenerys." 

He marched past Missandei, who followed rapidly along behind him, saying, "Really, My Lord, that's quite unnecessary, the Queen may be preparing for her dinner with her guests--"

At _ that _ , Jon went even faster, and practically jogged up the stairs. Wouldn't do to disturb Her Grace at her _ toilette, _would it?

When he reached the top of the stairs and strode down the walkway toward her door, he was stopped short when he realized the Unsullied guards were staring him down with neither warmth nor inclination to let him knock. 

"--and I'm sure you and I would be able to go over the inventory together with better result, Lord Snow," Missandei was saying, but Jon was only half listening, trying to figure out what to do next.

"Lord Snow!" she insisted, trying to get his attention, but magically, a musical voice spoke from within the room.

_ "Ivestragī zirȳla māzigon." _

The Unsullied instantly stepped aside, and one opened the door. Jon stepped into the darkening room. The smell of the place--sweet spices, the fireplace, Dany's skin and hair--nearly knocked him back, it was so infuriatingly _ much _. 

The woman herself was sitting by the fireplace, a flannel in her hand and her face flushed and dewy looking. A Dothraki woman was standing behind her, putting what seemed to be last touches on the kind of elaborate braids Jon hadn't seen on the Queen since she'd taken up Northern dress. The Dothrakaan fiercely stared him down as she picked up a string of bells and started tucking and pinning it into Her Grace's hair. Her battle bells, worn to remind those she faced of her greatest victories, usually donned only for fights.

"My Lord," the Queen said coolly. "You seem to require my attention."

Bloody yes, he _ required-- _fuck. He swayed slightly on his feet. 

The Dothraki woman finished her work and made some respectful gesture to the queen, who dismissed her with a nod.

Jon stupidly held up the scroll. "What is all this?"

"You seem to be the one holding my inventory scroll," Her Grace said, and stood. She was still wearing her _ fucking wedding dress. _"Perhaps you should tell me."

"You've brought guests and goods to my home without leave, and now I'm required to give up my people's food storage for you?"

He saw the moment when the little muscles in her jaw flickered as she clenched her teeth. "I will require much and more of you as you fulfill your obligations to me, My Lord," she said. "If you haven't forgotten, we have vast armies that will be marching south in a few weeks, and it would be best if both your people and mine were adequately fed." 

He felt his ire rise. _ Finally, _they could at least fight, if nothing else. "You brought rations enough to feed your entire army for months when you came here. Now, those men are half gone, as are mine. This food should've stayed in your ships to meet us on the way." His voice was rising, he couldn't help it.

"Not if it's going to _ feed your people," _she growled.

Jon's tipsy brain lumbered along slowly for a beat.

"My people," he said blankly.

"Did you think," she gritted, "that I would receive hundreds of thousands of meals worth of food and leave the North starving for the winter?" She advanced on him, eyes flaring. "Do you think I haven't been listening to your sister talk at every opportunity about the burden my armies have laid upon your House?" 

She got close enough to touch, close enough to smell, close enough to taste... 

She snatched the scroll out of his hand and paced away. "Do you think--"

"I'm sorry." 

They were the only words he had. He was a fool. A barbaric Northron fool, utterly unworthy to stand before her. "Daenerys. I'm sorry."

She turned her back to him, and all the puffed-up heat seemed to deflate out of her.

"It is _ your home," _ she said lowly, voice full of pain. The fire crackled softly, the only sound in the room. He would go to her, touch that hunched shoulder--

And then she took a deep breath that straightened her spine and said in a crisper, but still-thick voice, unrolling the scroll with a crackle, "And it will be Rhaegal's home for the rest of your life. I can't ship more herds here, but I can remove some of the other... difficulties."

It struck him brutally that after the war in the South, he would be separating, likely permanently, this mother from one of her children._ Again. _And that the fiery brothers would no longer have each other.

He tried to open his mouth and say something comforting, anything at all, but there was a gentle knock on the door and Missandei called out, "Your Grace, your guests will arrive soon."

Her back still to him, Dany said, "You should get to know them. They're not evil men, and they will be young lords governing in wartime as well." Then she called, "Missandei?"

Missandei immediately opened the door and came in carrying the covered bowl, another soft towel, and what smelled like a cup of shamile tisane. She set her items down on the table and took the scroll from the unmoving queen. 

"Shall we discuss storage now, My Lord?" the Naathi woman asked, her voice as formal as he'd ever heard it.

Jon murmured a much-chastened, "Your Grace," and followed Missandei out of the room. 

* * *

It was very late by the time the whole shipment had been settled into the proper storerooms, well past supper. In the end, they had to call for Sansa to help, because he had no idea how things like fresh lemons and citrons, hard red pomegranates, the enormous globes of melons, and crates of dried soft fruits should be stored, as the Night's Watch never saw such things and the Unsullied had never seen real cold. He was loathe to have a single one of these wonders damaged. Sansa had only heard of some of them, and made her best guesses, looking reluctantly intrigued. 

"And you're certain this is all for us?" she asked, watching men cart the last crates of root vegetables into the cold cellars. "How did you manage to guilt her into it?"

Jon had no energy for such attitudes now, being dead sober, dead tired, and much chastened. The smell of root vegetables and cold earth down here was pleasant, but that was about all he could say for the literal hole in the ground. "I guilted her into nothing. You told her we had more needs than our stores could meet, and when her tribute arrived, she decided to meet them."

Sansa narrowed her eyes and looked calculatingly up and down the long basement, taking in the overflowing bounty. "What generosity,' she said flatly. "It will certainly help cement the goodwill she's been drumming up with the Northern lords. You said her cities are doing well. Doesn't she have millions of citizens?"

"Sounds about right. Maybe two million."

"Then this isn't that much. She could afford to be much more generous. She may want to buy me with this, but it won't keep us through even a short winter, and is no great sacrifice to her. The smallfolk won't know that, though. We need to start keeping guards on every member of the family, including you."

He wanted to rest his aching head on one of the wooden shelf beams, but refrained. "I need no guard. _ Arya _ needs a guard far less. Put watches on Bran and yourself, but I say that only because I don't like the men the shipment brought with it."

She looked at him derisively**.** "You mean the _ suitors." _

"I mean all of them. I talked to Tyrion today, and I don't trust one of them."

"You shouldn't, of course, but that's admirably unlike you. What did he say?"

After all that had happened between them, he wondered if he should tell Sansa any of this, but if his family was hurt because he hadn't, he'd never forgive himself. "That Martell may want one of the dragons for himself, for one thing. He might have enough Targaryen blood to ride one."

Even in the dim torchlight, he could see the displeased twist of her mouth. "Oh wonderful, more assassins in our midst. And what of the rest?"

"Ser Adrian is no bannerman of Highgarden, though he travels with Lord Willas' party." The cold of the room seemed to enter the pit of his stomach, just thinking about the man. 

"Ser Adrian is the knight you hated even more than the rest?” she asked. “You weren't very discreet about that."

He felt himself rile at her hypocrisy. "You made no secret of hating Daenerys on sight, either--"

She snapped right back at him, _ "’Daenerys?’ _ Is that who she is again? Well, that shows how well her ploys are working on you--"

"It's not a bloody ploy, Sansa! She doesn't plot and scheme every second of her life, like you do--"

"Then it's even worse,” she railed, “because that means you're hells-bent on allying us with someone doomed to _ lose this war, _ and then where will we be? Without an army, without _ you _ most likely, and the North like a treed animal when Cersei sics Euron Greyjoy, or the Crown's army, or whomever else is left on us."

_ Gods! _

He blew up. "Has it ever bloody occurred to you that if you turned all the energy you've put into talking against the Queen into helping her win and be a good ruler, none of what you're afraid of would happen? She needs good people on her side--"

_ "But I am not on her side," _ Sansa said viciously. "I am on the _ North's _ side."

"She is too!" he said, only keeping his voice down because the family tombs were on the other side of the cellar wall. "She came back from the East, where she lived in a golden bloody pyramid and people worshipped her, because she wanted to help her own people. Can you imagine that perhaps she's not a villain or a fool just because she wants to take back the throne that is hers by right? Instead of assuming that she's just the same as everything you've seen and everything you're afraid of, will you just bloody ask her what you want to know?"

Sansa swallowed hard, and looked exasperated, but as if, just possibly, she might be softening. "She can make pretty eyes and pretty words at me--"

"You mean like Willas Tyrell?" Arya asked quietly, from so close beside them they both yelped.

"Seven _ Hells, _Arya!" Sansa cried.

"Such unladylike words," his littlest sister said coolly. 

There was just the oddest little pause, and Sansa said, "What about Lord Willas?"

The corner of Arya's mouth quirked just the tiniest bit. "Nothing. You like him."

"I don't know him, so _ no, _ I don't _ like him," _Sansa denied. "He's just another Southron lord. And he's here to try to marry the Queen."

Jon did _ not _need to be hearing about that.

"I'm going to bed," he said, "You two should as well."

They were still talking long after he left the cellar stairs.


	13. The Demonstration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Daenerys gets her groove back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi friends, sorry to make you wait so long for the latest chapter! Real life, in the form of a big writing gig, some additions to an upcoming chapter, and Little Eyre with a stomach virus, have swallowed me up. Your comments--and more than anything, the help and companionship of my beta, anread, made me feel like a human being through it all, and I love you for it. I'll be back to posting one to three times per week and responding to comments for the forseeable future. 
> 
> Two notes: 
> 
> Silk armor: The Dornish silk armor is actually Mongolian, from the era of Ghengis Khan. It and the bamboo longbow were the innovations that allowed them to sweep China and nearly take over Europe.
> 
> And: The action starts to pick up from here. <3

The next morning, Jon dragged himself awake from a hideous, half-erotic nightmare of watching Dany being fucked by a snakelike man, who then left her unconscious on the ground as he morphed into a mountain of writhing hounds that attacked Rhaegal with their teeth. He awoke gasping and sickened, his wrecked heart pounding in his chest. The horrible shock of the dream, of seeing Dany's white body sprawled out in the mud, mouth slack, as something terrible slithered away from her, and then his dragon-brother shrieking in pain, left him anxious and blurry for long moments, until his senses brought him back to his solitary room.

The dim blue light of dawn was just filling the window, so he shoved himself out of bed and struggled into his clothes. The sight of Dany's bare skin in the dream only emphasized his terrible aloneness, which had so recently, and briefly, been cured. If he could not go to her and comfort himself with her living, glowing body, then he must at least go to Rhaegal. He hadn't visited the dragons yesterday, with all the madness, and he realized now it was a mistake he didn't want to make again. Whatever Prince Quentyn had planned--if anything at all--he needed to deepen his own connection with Rhaegal to help keep them both safe. The dragon wasn't quite healed enough to be ridden yet, but they could work on their communication, which would be so desperately needed in the coming war. And then, after the war, their relationship would have to be strong, since he was likely to be the only companion the great beast would have for as long as Jon lived. 

That expanse of time, in which Jon would be the only dragonrider in all of the North, and Rhaegal the only beast of his own kind, stretched out in his mind like an endless frozen tundra. Why, he wondered, did the prospect of life without Dany seem ever more bitter as the days dragged on? He'd made his decision about her--or his vicious fate had chosen it for him--and that should've eased his mind. He should, he thought as he passed through the quiet, still-dark keep and toward the frigid, wind-whipped moors, be getting to some bloody acceptance. Even in the days after his first horrified realization of what having taken the Black truly meant, or when Ygritte had perished, he had gone through a hard period of mourning, but a slow willingness to face whatever came next had always trickled through the pain, like icemelt off a glacier. Maybe it was the presence of the heirs, but the flavor of his current unwelcome destiny just kept getting more bitter.

By the time Jon had gotten to the dragon's nest, the bleak winter sun was well up, and the hot-blooded beasts were stirring about, chirruping and growling at each other in their almost-comprehensible language. Both immediately swung their massive heads in his direction when they sensed him, and as he got closer, they crept to meet him, staying low to the ground. Rhaegal immediately thrust his snout at Jon for caresses, flooding Jon at his touch with images and feelings. There was the rich, sour-savoriness of burned meat, the annoyance at the cold weather, the dragon's longing for the high, empty territory above the clouds, and a sense of the wounds to his wing and hide healing rapidly. He was nearly ready to fly again. And, of course, there was the sense of his mother, and endless pictures of her face, in a thousand moods. Jon pushed those thoughts away firmly, focusing on his fondness for the beast and a mental promise to take him flying the moment Rhaegal felt ready.

Drogon sat a companionable distance away, saying nothing but lending the vivid, speechless glow of his mental presence. Jon got the clear sense that the black dragon was still suffering considerably from his injuries. He'd seen hundreds of stab wounds on the dragon's body, where the dead's swords had slipped between the still-immature scales. None of the cuts were especially serious, but together made it painful for the beast to fly or even sit comfortably, and would make him clumsy and slow in the air. Jon was struck with a wave of guilt when he realized that Daenerys had had to call her injured son down on Rhaegal yesterday to curb his little display in front of her guests. Jon still felt deeply suspicious of Thorne (and mostly despised the heirs, for obvious reasons), but it had not been worth it to hurt Dany's enormous child any further.

Jon stayed with them a good hour, and then, when two Unsullied came dragging a string of terrified sheep and goats in his direction, Jon left them to their meal and headed for his own. If he was lucky, he would catch his early-rising sisters at breakfast in the Great Hall. If he'd made any progress at all with Sansa the night before, he wanted to keep at it, if only to prevent having dangers from both within and without, now that the Southrons were here.

As he passed through the yards toward his meal, his head whipped around at the unmistakable creak of the door at the top of the King's Tower. A lone figure came out, and in the long shadows under the roof, it could've been anyone, anyone slim and dark of hair and skin, like--

Missandei. He loosed an unintentional sigh of relief when the Naathi woman revealed herself by stepping into the brightening morning light. She was still holding that mysterious bowl, but, when she spotted him watching her, handed it to an Unsullied guard with a word and then approached him.

A bit shamefaced at having been caught looking on Her Grace's door, he went to meet her halfway. 

"Good morning, My Lord," she said. "The Queen sends me with an invitation for you." 

His heart jumped in his chest and he nodded wordlessly.

"All commanders are invited this afternoon to a demonstration of fighting styles and weapons at the Dothraki camp. The Queen's visitors have never seen Essosis in combat, and wish to better understand their new allies and offer some innovations. I believe there will also be a horse race."

He couldn't quite keep the disappointment from echoing through his body, nor could he hold back another flash of irritation. A horse race and some show, like a tourney, when his home was still a shambles of melted, bloodstained rubble. 

"There is much work to be done on the castle before we leave and the worsening weather hits. How long will this take?"

"I don't know, My Lord. Shall I inquire?"

He shook his head, already weary though the day had just begun. After yesterday, when she had proven so heartbreakingly generous to him, he had to trust that she was not being careless with the little time they had. 

After a breakfast with his sisters, Bran, and homely Alys Karstark, whom Sansa had brought to the high table and put in one of her own dresses for some reason, Jon went into the yard to meet with the fresh work crew Sansa had said she had put together for him. 

To his great surprise, all of them were highborns, mostly scions or second sons of Northern Houses that were relatively important, and all loyal. They seemed a bit on edge, but hale enough, so he put them to work clearing stone and pitched in alongside them to give himself something to do. He expected to hear idle talk of the planned demonstration, and there was a bit of it, but somehow, the conversations all seemed to turn in a peculiar direction: these men's sisters. This one was pretty as an angel, he was told, and this one could play the lute, sing, and draw. Another was a fine rider, and quite virtuous, while several others were widows who had lost a child to fever or injury, and were very ready to make another heir.

The sun was getting high and the talk utterly grating when Jon stopped chucking rocks for a moment and looked around the courtyard. They had an audience, looking down from the second-story walkways and peering from the high window of the library tower. It was all women--Sansa, Lady Alys, and at least two dozen other highborn ladies who had stayed together in the crypt during the battle. All but Sansa were dressed as if for a feast in spring, with bright colors and useless trailing skirts. Not one of them was doing any work, and they were all staring back at him as if he were the biggest hog at the faire. 

_ Seven buggering Hells. _

He turned to the men he was working with. "About these sisters of yours?" he asked, loudly enough for his voice to carry across the yard.

There was an eager chorus of "Aye, Lord Jon?" and "Yes, My Lord?" 

"Are they out here throwing stones into the cart?" he asked. 

The men's faces went all blank and stupid as goats. 

"No?" he asked, and glared at each man in turn. _ "Then I don't want to hear about them." _

There was a twittery rustle all around as the women whispered, offended, and took themselves on their way. The men glowered back at him, clearly put off from some promise Sansa had made at a chance at him, and went back to working.

Jon knelt, seething, by the next stone before him, ready to give it a heave and shove, but a tiny pair of boots planted themselves beside it. He glanced up. It was Arya, carrying a full wooden plate in one hand and a bloody enormous yew bow in the other. She jerked her head toward the bench outside the smithy, where a dozen workers from the winter town were closed up with Gendry on the Queen's mysterious project. He gratefully followed her, sat beside her, and she handed him the plate, which was laden with roast pork and some kind of sweetish, roasted Essosi vegetables, still warm from the ovens. 

"Thank the Gods for my little sister," he said, over the racket of hammers and men's voices. Through the wall behind them, he caught murmurs of "Bloody hard to get a tang into it," and "Won't ever come out, though, that's why--" then Gendry's voice saying, "Keep it down, you lot."

He turned his attention back to his sister and nodded at the bow. "What've you got that for?"

"Daenerys asked me to find a good bow the same size as her dragonbone one. This one was left in the armory. I think it belonged to the Smalljon Umber."

They both went silent, thinking of how that traitor had delivered Rickon to Ramsay Bolton, and murdered Shaggydog. Jon managed to swallow down his suddenly bone-dry bite of food, and then narrowed his eyes at her. "Hold up--she's _ Daenerys _ to you now?"

Arya shrugged.

He pressed, "You helping her now or still spying on her?"

She looked up at him with just the faintest hint of shame on her cheeks.   
  
"She's family now," she said. "Yours, even if she isn't mine. Besides, she's going to win this war, so I want her to get it right." 

He gave her a searching look and asked, "How d'you know she'll win?"

She looked around the keep, seeming to take in the teams of workingmen, some Northrons, some Essosi, as well as Dothraki and Free Folk women who were carrying and fetching heavy loads for the teams. With the cool, bluish light of the winter sun on them, they all looked suddenly more alike than they usually did. 

She said, "Her armies are bigger and better than Cersei’s, she's cleverer than I'd thought, and people want to follow her the way they want to follow you. It just took her a while to figure out the North."

He raised his eyebrows, thinking of all the trouble he'd bulled and cajoled his way through with his countrymen. "You think she's figured out our bannermen? _ I _ haven't bloody figured out our bannermen."

She quirked her mouth and silently leaned against his shoulder. He sighed and leaned into her in turn, then tucked into the food. Having Arya fully on the Queen's side would be a great help in all that would come next, no matter how she came to taking that position. 

He finally asked, "So, how did she win them over? The Northern lords?"

Arya shook her head. "She hasn't yet. But she will. Women have to do different things than men, especially pretty women."

"What _ things?" _he asked darkly. "And is Sansa doing them, too?"

She sniffed. "Sansa's a Stark. She didn't have to earn her place, though at least she's working to now, regardless."

A bell clanged from the direction of the camps. 

"We should go," Arya said. She took his empty wooden plate from him, stood up, and with a careful eye, whipped her wrist to spin it through the air, through Sansa's solar door, which was just swinging shut behind a pretty dress. The well-heeled maiden gave a startled yelp when it smacked her on the arse, and he couldn't help but laugh. His amazing baby sister.

They set off across the yard together, and he asked, "You caught that farce with the ladies?"

She snorted and said nothing. 

He agreed. Not worth wasting words on. The idea of being with another woman after Dany--it wasn't worth entertaining.

As the crunched over the snowy moors, she finally said, "You'll need to have an heir, though, for Rhaegal. He'll live for hundreds of years, and dragons can't be around people without a rider. It's too dangerous."

He'd thought of that, but only in the vaguest of terms. He shook his head. "If he and I both survive the war, we'll think on that then. Not now."

"No," she said, "I imagine not now." 

Then they were at the field, where a crowd had already gathered. The Queen was standing in a strange little group--her, the Hound, Ser Brienne, Lord Willas, and the Prince. All of them towered over the tiny Queen, making her look unnaturally inconsequential and delicate by contrast. As if she were remotely either of those things.

Arya peeled off to join them and said something to the Hound, who sneered viciously at her, but willingly took the yew bow from her hand. Lord Willas laughed with his head thrown back at something the Queen said, took her hand, and bowed over it with a kiss. The fool was resplendent in a fox fur cloak that would've looked absurd on any other man. The Queen gave him a blinding smile in return, warm and real, and Jon had to look away when he saw her brush her little gloved thumb affectionately over the big lord's gauntleted knuckles. This was apparently going to be not only a waste of his time, but a particular form of torment as well.

Thankfully, Arya came back to Jon and they looked for places to sit on the logs that had been drawn up to the front, while the Queen waved over another group of Dothraki and some of the men who had come with the heirs. As she conversed with them, Sansa waved to the empty seat beside herself, which was clearly meant for him. His red-haired sister smirked at him as he sat.

He immediately whispered to her, "Don't ever do that again. With the women."

She said slyly, "When the queen announces _her _ new alliances, wouldn't it be pleasanter if you were able to announce _ yours? _If it isn't going to be me, it should be a Northern woman at the very least."

_ "Never. Again," _ he said.

She smiled and wittered on, "Lady Alys worships you for letting her keep her House. She would be a--" but she shut her mouth abruptly as Willas Tyrell turned toward them and started limping in their direction, crutch clumsy and slipping in the snow. She gave the big man an uncomfortable smile as he settled himself into the seat on her other side and greeted them warmly. 

"So, My Lord," Sansa asked the man tartly, "what do you think of this display? It seems a bit unseemly to hold a tourney when we are preparing for both war and winter."

He smiled, looking slightly abashed. "I'm sorry to hear it, My Lady. I had understood that you enjoyed some Southern customs. Fortunately, it isn't a tourney. Her Grace and I simply agreed that it might be best for all the commanders going south to see the capabilities of one anothers' armies. The Prince and I will be bringing new troops we've raised to join the Queen's campaign, and while we've traveled in the East, we've been lucky enough to never have seen Unsullied or Dothraki at war. If we're going to be of use in planning this fight, we should know our allies."

"And," said the Prince, sashaying over to insinuate himself into the seat beside Jon, "we'd like to show off a bit of our own style for the crowd. After all, it is a joy to see and be seen amongst such fine company." He smiled self-indulgently at their entire party.

One of Tyrell's bannermen, a knight whose nancy-looking sigil was a field of butterflies, leaned up from the log behind them to say, "His Highness means to demonstrate the use of his pretty silk shirts, and we'll show off Lord Tyrell's horses in a little race against the Dothraki's best."

A shiver went up Jon's spine when he realized that Adrian Thorne had slipped into the seat directly behind himself. The Southern knight grated, "The Dothraki may have fine beasts, but His Lordship's warhorses and palfreys are the fastest for their size in the world. The Essosi will be disappointed when we show them the shape of our hooves." 

Jon very much wanted to take another seat, or do anything to get that man away from his back, but Arya rescued him by slipping in next to the man, exactly where she could keep an eye on him. 

His littlest sister asked Lord Tyrell, "What about your hounds? Will you be showing them off as well?"

Sansa immediately stopped smiling at the mention of dogs. 

"Ah, no, My Lady," Lord Willas said, looking a bit uncomfortable. "I don't raise war dogs. The pack I brought with me are all sight-hounds and scenting dogs." 

"So you don't use them on people?" Sansa asked, sounding as if her throat were tight. "Ever?"

He seemed to take in her pained look and said softly, "I haven't the heart for it, My Lady. I've bred and trained many war horses, but hounds are different. To create a vicious dog, you must treat them viciously. I'd rather just enjoy them."

"But what if someone attacked you?" Sansa asked, with perhaps more force than was appropriate. "If you needed protection?"

He said, in a voice kind enough to be breaking the news of a death, "A gently treated dog will protect its master like a brave person will protect their own family--valiantly, to the point of laying down their own life. It doesn't require harming the dog." 

"Surely you could train them to protect more cunningly, though?" she insisted. "Perhaps to..." she swallowed hard, "bite the face... or the sword hand of your attacker?"

He didn't take his eyes off her. "Yes, and there are many who train guard dogs and war dogs in such a way. But I believe such training harms a hunter or companion dog. It makes them aggressive to the rest of the pack, and apt to needlessly attack innocent outsiders, whether animals or men."

She'd been clutching a wad of her skirt in her fists, seemingly without noticing, and let it go, smoothing out the wrinkles. She looked into the distance with an aura of sadness so thick Jon could've stirred it with his hand. Then she seemed to gather herself and asked with feigned casualness, "And if a dog has been trained that way, would you say that it is ruined?"

He smiled. "No, My Lady, but it takes much care and gentleness to teach it to trust again, and to be trustworthy."

"And is the dog ever fully... repaired?" she asked, looking down at her wrinkled skirt again.

He shrugged, settled his crutch carefully against the log, and said lightly, "Not really, but then, I never will be either, and good folk still allow me in their company."

Ignoring the whole, strangely laden conversation, the Prince nodded to the proceedings at the front and broke in, saying, "Ah, they will start with the bow. Good. Lady Arya, our savior, where did you find a bow big enough to match Khal Drogo's?"

"It belonged to a bannerman of ours who turned traitor. He's dead now," she said calmly.

"As well he should be," he said smoothly. Gods, the man looked like a reptile. "You have endured so many traitors, here in the North. We look forward to the Queen enjoying better company when she returns to the South. Surrounding herself with people who adore her, as you Starks have done for yourselves, will surely help."

Before Jon could decide whether he'd prefer to use his dagger or Longclaw to gut the Prince, Daenerys stepped up in front of the crowd, which now was made up of almost the entire population of the castle and camps. She was wearing one of her Northern style dresses again, and the black sable cloak lined with the red of her house.   
  
In a ringing voice that seemed as if it could carry for miles, she said, "People of the North, guests from the South, Dothraki, Unsullied, and Free Folk, I thank you for joining us in this exercise. I hope it will help us to better plan the battles ahead and to understand and appreciate each ally's many strengths." 

She gestured to one of her men behind her, who handed her the shining black bow, now strung. Standing on end, it dwarfed her. She went on, "Before we begin the races and melee, I thought you would enjoy seeing a priceless weapon that came to me years ago, in Essos. This bow is made of dragonbone, and cured by dragonfire, making it stronger than steel and lighter than willow. It is hundreds of years old, and until it came here, there were none of its kind in all of Westeros. It was a gift to my late husband. As you can see," she said, smiling impishly at the top of the gleaming ebony curve, well above her head, "my husband was a very large man." 

The crowd laughed, and Jon realized it was the only time he'd ever seen her talk about Drogo with a smile on her face.

She went on, "I've asked the warrior Sandor Clegane, formerly of the Kingsguard, to shoot a fine Northern yew bow of the same size for a comparison of distance and accuracy. Ser Brienne of Tarth, sworn to House Stark, will follow with my dragonbone."

Clegane shambled resentfully up with the Umber bow in hand, jabbed two arrows in the ground, nocked a third, aimed it down a long course that had been staked with distance markers, and loosed. The bowstring twanged, and the arrow flew a truly impressive distance. He took two more shots, then lumbered back to stand behind the Queen, not even looking to see his distance. A Northern boy who had been stationed far down the course ran to the farthest arrow and yelled back, "410 yards!"

It was an impressive distance that few could ever dream of attaining. The crowd yelled and applauded, while Clegane looked as if he'd rather be cleaning a pigsty. Then Dany nodded to Ser Brienne. The newly dubbed knight nodded graciously at the crowd, went to the line, then rapidly nocked, drew, and loosed her three arrows from the gleaming ebony bow. The crowd seemed to hold its breath as all three arrows flew, flew, flew down the course, far past Clegane's arrows, far past the visible markers, into the distance. The little boy shouted and ran toward where the lady knight's arrows had stuck. He seemed to run for ages, and then whooped and sprinted back. He waited until he was almost back to the Queen to shout, gasping, "A thousand yards, Yer Grace, a thousand yards!"

The crowd whooped and stood, shouting in amazement. Even Sansa looked stunned. 

The Queen nodded, pleased, and when the shouting died down, four Northern men lugged out a pair of wooden targets with a man's shape painted on them, setting them up at the 300 yard stake. The Queen nodded, and Clegane went to his line with three more arrows. The first one hit the painted silhouette in the right shoulder and stuck, quivering. The crowd roared. It was a disabling shot at a distance few men could attain. The second one flew slightly wide, and the third one hit the silhouette in the hip, another dropper. The crowd yelled the man's name, and he rewarded them with a bitter grimace. 

The Queen handed Ser Brienne three more arrows, these with steel shafts instead of wood, and the woman stepped up to her line as the crowd went dead silent. She nocked the heavy arrow, drew, aimed the stunning bow, and very carefully loosed. Her missile hummed through the air, hit the target dead in the heart, and exploded out through the back of the target's chest, throwing wood splinters for yards around. The crowd leapt to its feet, shouting and roaring. Even Jon stood, gobsmacked. It was unbelievable. The thing could've taken down giants, mammoths, even perhaps a dragon, if the shot was in the eye. It was an incredible weapon of war.

The knight gave a pleased nod to the crowd, then drew and loosed her second arrow. This one blew a hole through the target's throat and fell out through the back of the wood. The crowd howled for her. She drew the third one, aimed with great care, and blasted through the target's face, obliterating most of the top third of the target and throwing the arrow so far behind that it could easily have dropped another man behind it. The crowd roared and shouted, "Honor to Tarth," and "Ser Brienne!"

The blonde knight bowed, grinning shyly, and waved to the crowd like a proper tourney knight, then strolled back to the Queen. She bowed low again, and handed the weapon to Her Grace. 

Daenerys waited until the raucous applause settled down, and said, "This weapon is precious to me, and priceless, but it is also almost indestructible. After the melee, any person, highborn or low, is welcome to try their hand at it today." There were more shouts, many of them about "the gracious Queen."

Jon chanced a glance around him, reading the faces. Sansa looked wondering, and a little sour. The Prince was smiling as if he were very much in on some joke the Queen had just made. Lord Tyrell looked simply delighted. Arya had a sharp, knowing little grin on her face, and Ser Adrien looked like a starved man who'd just seen a platter of roast meat being fed to his most hated enemies. 

_ Seven Hells. _

The next demonstration was far stranger. After men cleared away the targets, they hauled onto the course a pair of freshly slaughtered pigs, still dripping blood from their cut throats.

The Prince left his seat beside Jon in a swirl of yellow silk, and strutted to the Queen's side. They looked gratingly radiant together, two well-dressed stunners, dark and light, side by side, in the colors of their ancient Houses. 

She introduced him, and he said, "Nobles and friends of the North, I thank you for your indulgence. You have seen me around your fine home, looking, I must admit, far more decorative than men of your land prefer to be." Laughter rippled through the still-elated crowd, the young ladies in their fine dresses giggling into handkerchiefs. Sansa was perhaps the only one with a skeptical brow. 

"I will tell you, though, that in Dorne, the land of my home, even beauty serves a greater purpose." He gestured down at himself. "This fine coat is made of Myrish silk, woven tight and thick to the specifications of our armorers." 

At the puzzlement in the crowd, he said, "Yes, our armorers. The East has not only fine bows, but fine defense against them. Please observe how your countrymen to the South survive arrow wounds in battle and then fight on even after being shot."

One of his men came forward and handed Dany a yard of the yellow silk he'd seen in her room, the same, he realized, as the Prince's coat. She draped it over the carcass of one of the dead pigs. Ser Brienne came and took up the yew bow Clegane had used, drew it, and loosed an arrow at close range into the side of first the naked pig, then the one clothed in the yellow silk. The silk puckered around the arrow in a strange swirled pattern where it entered the pig's body. She then took a crossbow and bolts from the Northern boy and similarly sent a bolt into each pig. 

The Prince gestured grandly. "Now, observe. Ser Brienne, would you remove the arrows from each animal?"

The big knight knelt beside the naked pig and pulled the crossbow bolt first. It was covered to the fletching in dark gore. 

"Ah," the Prince said, "it pierced a vital organ--very unfortunate for this dead pig, no?" 

As the crowd laughed, Brienne leaned over the pig and tried to pull out the barbed arrow. She tugged, and lifted the whole pig off the ground. 

"I'm sorry, Your Highness," she said. "I'd have to use quills to remove the arrow, as I would on a person, or push it through."

He shook his head forlornly. "Don't bother. I think he will not survive his wounds." As the crowd guffawed, he gestured her toward the other pig.

"Now, good Ser," he said, "gently pull the silk as you remove the bolt."

The knight did as she was bid, and pulled out a crossbow bolt that had sunk only an inch or so in, and was barely smeared with red blood.

"You see," he said, "the bolt was caught in the silk and sank in just a little. It struck no organs because the silk surrounding it pushed the organs out of the way. This would be a very grateful pig, if he were not already destined for the spit!"

As the crowd whispered and laughed giddily, Ser Brienne gently did the same to the war arrow. Seemingly miraculously, the arrow slowly slid free of the pig's body, the silk still wrapped around the barbed head. She lifted up the arrow to show that it was barely bloodied, and the Prince dramatically whipped the silk off the pig's carcass and held it open for the crowd to see. It was badly wrinkled and bloody around the two places where the animal had been pierced, but it was whole. The implications for a soldier were incredible--near weightless armor that would allow a fighter to survive potential killing shots with minimal injury. 

"Seven Hells, where can I get some wrappins' like that?" a man yelled. 

The Prince laughed. "Like so many things about Queen Daenerys, it is most precious and rare. However, my own men, who have just become Her Grace's southernmost army, all wear shirts of this silk," he said. "March South and you will have an opportunity to acquire some for yourselves. "

There were speculative whispers all around them as to what it would mean to have such a resource in battle. A man behind Jon said, "I'd march South just to get the bloody stuff. I'd never fear Wildlings on my fuckin' farm again."

Jon knew the man was a fool if he thought it was all the defense he'd need against a raid by Free Folk, but he couldn't help but envy the stuff himself. He'd have to humble himself and ask the damned Prince if he could buy some off him. And, of course, Dany had a whole bolt of it...

The Queen stepped forward again and thanked the Prince, who leaned over to whisper something in her ear. She laughed, violet eyes crinkling, as if the man had said something naughty, and the man smugly swayed back to his seat beside Jon. 

"And now, Lord Willas of House Tyrell," the Queen called. The man awkwardly levered himself up, limped to the Queen, then planted his crutch firmly in the snow. 

"Hello, friends," he called, obviously just as practiced at speaking before vast crowds as the Queen and Prince. "My men have laid out a one-mile racecourse around the camps. I aim to compare my own purebred horses, whom I humbly believe to be the finest and fastest in Westeros, with the best of the Dothraki herd. Her Grace has invited the Dothraki's best riders to choose their mounts from her personal string to challenge me. If you would follow us."

The crowd stood up and leisurely made their way to the edge of the camp, flowing around the slow-moving Lord and the Queen, who paced companionably alongside him. They found a marked course, and three of the fine Highgarden coursers restively danced beside three equally cagey Dothraki bays. Each horse was mounted by a slim man--the coursers with a Tyrell bannerman and the bays with a young Dothrakaan. 

The lord called, "First, the light cavalry horses. May the best beasts and riders win." 

Another Northern lad stepped onto the course between the two lines of horses, lifted one hand with a white kerchief in it, waited, waited, while the crowd held their breath. The horses snorted and pawed, knowing something was coming. The boy dropped his hand. The horses and riders took off with a storm of thundering hooves, like beautiful shining arrows, all satin coats and flowing muscle. Their riders bent low over them as they pelted out of the camp area, around its edge, and flowed away from the crowd. 

Jon shaded his eyes with his hands as the racers passed beneath the sun, then thought of Arya behind him. He gestured to his little sister to come stand in front of him, then when she came around, he picked her up and dropped her on a short stump by his knees. She slung an arm around his shoulder, eagle eyes still on the horses. 

It took just a couple of minutes for the racers to fly around the camp and, to the surprise of many, the Dothraki beasts were well in front. The screamers on their back were howling their distinctive battle cry, which a crowd of young boys in the crowd took up themselves. In a spray of thrown slush and horse smell, the beautiful beasts flashed past the finish line, and the Dothraki in the camp rose up as one to ululate in triumph. 

Jon looked over Lord Tyrell, whose fine horses had had their arses handed to them, and the man was simply laughing and applauding as his own horses flew past. He shouted something to the Queen over the crowd, and she nodded warmly, clapping as well.

When the commotion died down, the Lord stepped forward again, and extolled, "I often find myself humbled, and today is no exception. The Dothraki have bred their beasts for endurance and speed for thousands of years to my few generations, and their fine sensibilities show. Fortunately, the Queen has agreed to allow me a few prize studs for breeding to my line. Now, let's see if Highgarden is to be humbled again! The destriers!"

Three Dothraki and three Highgardeners led out the beasts they'd be racing. Jon knew what he'd see. Included in Daenerys' three was Rhakkaro's black, the horse she'd meant for him, and in Tyrell's lot was the Lord's own gorgeous palomino mare. Even among the other four horses, all extraordinary, these two stood out like enormous polished gems, big and fierce as young dragons. The massive equines snorted and chuffed, pulling at their reins, seeming to know what was ahead, and itching to run. 

The boy took his place again, and when he dropped his hand, the horses blasted off like catapult fire, throwing up dirt and vibrating the ground under Jon's feet. They took a little longer to circle the camps than the first set, but when they dropped into the home stretch, the sight was so breathtaking that the previous racers were utterly forgotten. Their manes flowing like bright and dark fire in the sunlight, their coats shining, their muscles straining, Rhakkaro's beast and Tyrell's were neck and neck until they spotted the finish line. Rhakkaro's horse must've known what was wanted of him because he squealed above the crowd noise and dug in for more speed. He pulled ahead, first a neck, then a length, then two, and exploded across the finish line in an easy win. A few seconds later, Tyrell's own horse followed, then the rest of the Dothraki beasts, and then the other two Highgardeners close behind. 

The crowd roared and shouted, for the Highgardener who had managed to come in second, and the Queen's Dothrakis that had taken the rest of the field. For just a moment, Dany dropped her regal pose and shouted, fist in the air. Lord Tyrell looked at her with such affection that it sickened Jon to see it. He should be happy for her, he knew--happy that she was joyful again, that she had seemed to have forgotten all that had passed between them, and most of all that she would soon have a husband who would bring her everything he could not. He should feel such things, but he could not.

The melee was more like what he'd expected, but Dany used it as skillfully to move the crowd as she had with the horse race. Ten Unsullied fought against ten Dothraki and ten followers of Lord Tyrell and Prince Quentyn. The Dornishmen carried either long spears or swords, plus bucklers that looked about as useful as the dinner plates they resembled, and the Reach men were in full plate with two-handed longswords. Jon went cold at the sight of the backup dagger hanging off Ser Adrian's belt, and had to remind himself that the thing was blunted.

When the Queen's trumpeter signaled the beginning of the bout, most of the men spread out and stalked specific opponents from other lands, hammering away or dancing out of the reach of blows as soon as they engaged. The Unsullied broke with tradition, though, and circled as one, overlapping their shields tight as fish scales and thrusting out a fence of deadly longspears. For a moment, Jon tasted in his mouth the sickening stench of blood, shit, and piss that he'd been crushed down into on this very plane in the Battle of the Bastards. The ring of metal on metal and the grunts of pain echoed through his clamoring head, and he had to clench his fists and suck a deep breath of the clean air to clear his mind. As the spell passed, he caught Tormund's eye across the way. His friend looked a bit green himself, but then an armored knight rolling on his back like a kicked-over turtle shouted, "I yield, friend," from the edge of the field and they both chuckled and could look back at the spectacle with clear eyes. The big knight had been flipped by an even bigger Dothrakaan, and the Essosi was just pulling the tip of his arakh from the man's visor opening to grinningly give the armored knight a hand up. The moment the knight stumbled away, the Dothrakaan spotted another knight and went after him. Before he could take a dozen steps, the shield wall of Unsullied swallowed him up, spit him out at his heavily accented, "Yield!" and then, seconds later, did the same to his intended opponent as well.

All the Dothraki were badly hindered by not being ahorse, as they usually were in battle, but they had the advantage of having sparred many times with the Unsullied, and mostly stayed out of their way. They used their lightness and speed to dart inside the guard of the slow, armored Reach soldiers, usually taking a few brutal blows and then simply bulling over their opponents and taking them out on the ground. They suffered a bit against Martell’s men, though. The Dornishmen’s spears gave them vastly superior reach and they flashed their little buckler shields about with such speed that they held back a good many blows from the swooping arakhs. Soon, all but four Dothraki and two Dornishmen stood, and then the full company of the Unsullied took down the remainder with a barrage of surrounding maneuvers and spear jabs. Then, the Unsullied, all unbloodied, yielded as a group, so that all ten of them "won."   
  
The crowd was still muttering about this when the Queen stepped forward, beside the immaculate line of Unsullied, to announce them as champions.   
  
She lifted her hand for silence, and when the noise died down, called out, “Today, we have seen fierce fighting from every man on this field, each warrior showing himself as full worthy to stand beside the mighty Northmen who host us. I am honored to call every one of you my soldiers. The Unsullied, though, have again proven themselves the greatest warriors in the world.” She walked down the line of men, saying their names as she went: “Grey Worm, Saalatan, Jhalabar Xhoso, Red Flea, Dragon Spear, Xanda’s Son, Dragon’s Fire, Kojja San, Balaq Mo, and Slave No More.” She turned to the crowd and continued, “These men fought as one man, as brothers, without internal conflict, without enmity. Because of their unity, they stand before you, victorious.” She paused in the now-setting sun, lit by the pale fire of evening, and letting her next words gain weight before she spoke them. “We will soon go south to fight a war for our home, for Westeros. Northerners and Southerners, we are one people. Let us learn from the Unsullied. Let us fight together!”   
  
The cheers that answered her were not ungenerous, and while folk clapped, Grey Worm leaned over to speak into his Queen’s ear. When he finished, she turned to face him with something like gratitude on her face and seemed to heartily agree to his words. When the audience quieted again, the Queen announced, “The Unsullied, your brothers in arms, wish to show their unity with you. They invite all comers to their camp for lessons in formation fighting during the second hour of every morning, until the day we march.” The cheers surged back with real spirit, and from the faces in the crowd around him, Jon knew both Her Grace and the Unsullied had won many new allies.

It wasn’t until days later, though, that Jon comprehended the full impact of what Dany had engineered. The two hours the event had taken became the talk of the camps and keep. Instead of whinging about their positions, or their obligations, or the Queen, the Northern lords stayed far more on the subjects of horses, weapons, and formation fighting. Some made plans to order silk armor from the South, or to trade for Dothraki horses, and all had men of their Houses in training with the Essosis. 

As for Jon, the relative quiet let him settle into a routine with the rebuilding of Winterfell, and his time with Rhaegal, his sisters, Sam, Ser Davos, and Tormund, plus the occasional meal with the still-sequestered Lord Tyrion. 

Bitterly, as the chaos in the keep slowly withdrew, the chaos in Jon's heart encroached deeper, until he felt half suffocated by it. Daenerys had lowered the level of muttering against her to a manageable level, spending half her time accepting "advisement" from witless dolts while acting the Northern lady, and much of the rest talking war plans with the Southrons and real Northern commanders. He attended these meetings, spoke as a commander should, and watched a great deal. He saw that Tyrell was a decent man with a mind made for strategy, and though the Prince was a whorish creature, he had an excellent grasp of war tactics and often brought insights from historical and Eastern campaigns to the talks. 

As for Jon himself, the Queen was as civil to him as to anyone else, never slighted him, and always extended to him the courtesy he was due as her loyal bannerman and Lord Paramount. And Jon could barely fucking stand it. To be seething with... whatever he felt for her--love, longing, anguish, regret, and have her feel nothing... Gods, it was unbearable. There was something in being coldly tolerated that cut him down to the bone, worse than attacks, worse than grief or anger. He'd rather she hated him, fought him, or just roasted him alive. He never even saw her with the dragons, and so never had a chance to touch her feelings through Rhaegal's mind. Rhaegal was healed enough to fly well, but Drogon was still grounded, so she seemed to go to Drogon whenever Jon was in the air, and to Rhaegal after they'd finished their flights. His only consolation was that sooner or later, they would have to start practicing flying together again. He might not be able to be her lover, but to talk with her, who for a time had truly shared everything with him, was not nothing.


	14. The Bowl of Snow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks again to my wonderful beta, anread, for her endless service to the Targaryen Restoration in times of peril.

One evening, Sansa ordered a boar specifically for "the Royal household," likely to herd the nobles Daenerys had been gathering in her rooms back toward her own fold. The Queen had arrived to supper early, surrounded by her people, and only nodded at Jon when he sat beside her, continuing her conversation with Lord Manderly, who had been offered Tyrion's chair for the evening, a high honor. The fat old noble had proven himself smart and ruthless during the War of the Five Kings, and Jon leaned in to hear what he was saying.  
  
“The moment you load your Unsullied into your own ships, My Queen,” the lord said, “I’ll load mine with the Northern armies and raise anchor alongside you.” He stabbed a piece of steak, took a hearty bite, chewed rapidly, swallowed, and said, “In fact, I think we ought have a few men from each of your armies on every ship. New Castle’s lads have been dicing with your fellows for the past week, after those formation-fighting lessons. I don’t know why they shouldn’t continue losing money to each other along the way.” He swiped his chin with a napkin. “Unity, and all that.”  
  
Perhaps a dozen men at the table below theirs, some Lords, some commanders from major Houses, immediately looked up at the high table with murder in their eyes. Their offense was so great Jon could feel their hatred on his skin, making the fine hairs lift like a forest.  
  
Jon glanced at Daenerys. She’d surely caught the shift in mood below them, but she continued to listen with a regal smile as Manderly went on about the arrangements he’d favor for the ships. She’d just done what likely no other person in history had managed, getting a powerful Northern lord to willingly ally himself with not just Southrons, but with Essosis, in common cause, and she had every right to be pleased. But Jon couldn’t be, not yet. The men below him were powerful in their own right, and as a faction, represented thousands of his people, ones who would follow their lords to the death if those men rebelled against sharing berths with horselords and Unsullied. His ears turned to the lower table, he caught snippets of their conversation, and it was all that he’d feared.  
  
“‘...they ‘spect me to sail with a bunch of buggering eunuchs at a _ Manderly’s _ orders--”

“Sit a Manderly next to a foreign queen and you see what he’s--”

“...Screamers will slit our throats in our sleep--”  
  
And that old saw, “We should stick with our own!”   
  
At that, Lord Harclay, a Mountain Clan leader from the far North, threw down his fork and eating knife so hard that the knife skidded across the table and clattered to the floor. He stood, glared directly at the Queen, and stalked out of the room.  
  
_ Fuck. _

For just a flash, Jon felt Dany’s eyes on him, and she followed his gaze to the blade on the floor.  
  
He leaned toward her and pledged quietly, “I’ll keep eyes on him for you. Ayra and I both will.”  
  
She nodded to him minutely, wafting a bit of the heartwrenchingly familiar perfume of her body in his direction, and said quietly, “I thank you for it.”  
  
Manderly had caught Harclay’s little show, as well as the evil looks of the men remaining, and his mood was spoiled. He looked disapprovingly down the table, to where Lord Tyrell was bent in close conversation with Ser Davos and the Prince. Manderly said peevishly, “It's a pity Lord Tyrell committed his entire fleet to ferrying the Dornish army to Dragonstone. A strategic mistake, in my mind.” 

Jon pushed away the petty thought that now he liked the man even more. The old lord pinched up a bite of bread as if it were the ear of a naughty child, and said, “He should’ve reserved a quarter of his galleys to carry your Dothraki, and at least two dozen warships to escort them.” He swiped the bread through his gravy and added, “Our entire force could’ve arrived ready to fight together, weeks before the Dothraki will arrived South on their own.”  
  
The Queen ignored her dinner and said, “I assure you, My Lord, the Dornish army required every ship in the Redwyne fleet. They number 50,000, and half that number is travelling overland through the Dornish marches to surround King’s Landing from the west. We needed Lord Willas’s ships for the remaining troops, plus supplies to wage a months-long seige, should it become necessary.”

Manderly smiled grimly at her and said, “I imagine that with your dragons, my good Queen, it will not.” Then he glared down at the Southrons and said, “Dorne may be no friend to the North, but I will admit being glad you corralled the only fresh army in Westeros through its Prince. It is a good alliance.” He took a sip of the firewine in front of him, shuddered at the drink's strength, and said, “Still, it would be better to not split your forces.” He grimaced and added, “Losing the Greyjoy fleet to Euron Crow-Eye was a bitter loss.”  
  
Daenerys agreed with a dark-eyed nod. “According to Lord Brandon, it's lying in wait for us somewhere in the Shivering Sea. The claims Euron made about forsaking Cersei were an utter farce."

"Has the Crow-Eye been spotted?" Jon asked.

Her Grace looked at him with the calm, respectful eyes of a stranger. "No. When my own cargo ships arrived from Meereen, the captain sent word that a warship that might've been the _ Silence _had been seen anchored near Old Valyria. What they were doing there, I have no idea." She nodded down the table at Bran. “Lord Brandon says the remaining magics of Old Valyria muddle his visions there.”

Varys, who was seated beside Lord Manderly, frowned and said, "It _ is _curious that anyone was in such a place. The waters there are treacherous and spiked with ruins, and the only landing places are infested with Stone Men. The Crow-Eye may be... unstable, to put it kindly, but he is no fool."

The weedy young Lord Littletree, who had once nearly spat on Jon for kneeling to Daenerys, called up from his table, "He must be a fool, to oppose our Queen!" 

Her Grace nodded genially and raised her glass to him, and the pup practically rolled on his back to show his pleasure in the gesture.

Bran said distantly, "He had a dragon's egg once. He couldn't get it to hatch, so he threw it into the sea. In case you came to have it."

A stricken look passed over Dany's face, like the flash from distant lightning, then she almost instantly smoothed it over. "Thank you, My Lord, for providing me with yet another reason to put him down," she said coolly. "If he wishes so badly to keep all that is good for himself, perhaps I ought to take what _ he _ values most."

Sansa murmured, loudly enough for many to hear her, "What a very mature attitude."

Jon flashed a quelling glare at her, then turned back to the conversation. He saw where Daenerys was going with this, and asked, "Lord Manderly, how might ships be disabled without destroying them for future use?"

The Queen glanced at him with real gratitude, and added, "To disable them from the air, specifically."

The old man chewed a bite as he thought about it, then swooped his fork through the air to knock against the tall taper candle in front of his plate, spilling wax onto the table. "Wreck the masts," he said. "If you were on open seas, you could wreck the masts, so they sat dead in the water, then wait until the sailors surrendered or died of thirst."

"Can sailors not replace their masts?" Her Grace asked. 

"That they can," the Lord said. "Thrice or perhaps four times, if it's just the top masts, but ships rarely carry more than one replacement for the mainmast. And the work of repair is fiddly, and easily disrupted by rough seas, or..." He looked the Queen and Jon together. "Or, winds.

"So," the Queen said, "if we flew low and destroyed their masts, then harried them to foul their repairs, the ships could be boarded at our leisure." 

Davos must’ve raised his head from the conversation with the heirs, because he chimed in, "Aye, your Grace. And, if you didn't want to wait for the sailors to surrender on their own time, I imagine torching one or two in a fleet would hurry the rest along."

The Queen looked speculatively at her wine goblet, then reached for her water cup instead. "And we have sufficient ships docked at White Harbor to board Euron's remaining fleet, should they come within our reach?"

"Certainly, Your Grace," Manderly enthused. "Though we have few warships, the men they carry would bring those reavers to heel."

Davos added, "Stannis' fleet, what remains of it, would also serve."

Daenerys nodded and then looked at Jon. "My Lord," she said, "Drogon will be ready to fly by the turn of the moon. We will need practice, in case we have the opportunity to take ships. Will you join me then in burning a few tall trees to prepare?"

"Aye, Your Grace," he said. "I look forward to it."  
  


* * *

And he _ was _ looking forward to it, he thought as he made his way up the library tower stairs just after supper. Anticipating being _ seen _ by her, flying with her, just having a real bloody conversation, even if it was about war-making, made him think of her constantly, though.

When Sam opened the door at his knock, Jon was surprised to see Gilly sitting at the hearth, sewing a patch on one of Sam's black robes while Little Sam played with a finely carved wooden horse that Jon recognized as being of Dothraki make. He greeted them all cautiously, and Gilly looked up at him with a "Hmmph" and went back to her work. 

"Gilly brought Little Sam back to visit me," Sam explained after saying his hello. "We've been having a lovely evening."

Jon knelt by the boy and asked him, "That's a fine horse, where did it come from?"

Little Sam galloped the steed to Jon's knee, barely tapping its fragile hooves on the floor, then made it rear up with an excellent whinny. "Queen Dany's blood man gived him to me," the little boy said. "She rides hrazefi and zhavorsi and her blood man maked my hrazef."

"One of the bloodriders," Sam explained. "Gilly does a bit of sewing for Her Grace, and Viggo has a boy Little Sam's age waiting for him back on Dragonstone. He carves Little Sam toys sometimes, and teaches him words in Dothraki. He says that the Queen--"

"--rides horses and dragons, aye, I know that bit of the language," Jon said.

Little Sam went on, "I have a running hrazef and a raring hrazef and two standing hrazefi. He's gwine'ta make me a walking hrazef next."

The conversation went on in that vein for some time, and Jon marveled at how clever the little boy was, peppering their conversation with well-pronounced Dothraki words, and how gentle he was with the fragile toy. Little Sam was no monster, any more than Dany. And how could he be hated by the Gods? He'd been rescued from his vile father, rescued from a White Walker, and now was growing up in a castle, among people who loved him so much they put aside great differences to keep his family together. And on top of that, he was a fine-looking little lad, well-favored in every way. 

The Gods made no sense at all.

Sam brought out a flagon of ale, and after two cups and a long talk about potential dragon-attack tactics, Jon had essentially forgotten Gilly was in the room, she'd been so silent.

Sam mentioned something about the snow piling up around the castle's building sites, and without thinking, Jon asked, "Sam, you're a maester in training. If a woman gathers a bowl of clean snow early every morning, and sometimes during the day, and takes it to her room, what would she be doing with it?"

Sam looked utterly confused by the question. "Snow? Has the, um, lady in question, been doing it for long?"

Jon thought about how long it had been since the battle. "A month," he said. "Every day for a month."

"Would she have, perhaps, an injury she's reducing the swelling on? Or perhaps lady's complaints, though those are usually given heat--"

"It's for crying," Gilly said flatly, not looking up from her sewing.

Startled, Sam said, "Oh, I'm sorry, Gilly, what are you talking about?"

Gilly said with some force, still looking at her work, "When a girl's been crying and wants no one to know, she puts cold things on her face. To take the swelling off her eyes and nose. Creek water or a cut potato works all right, but snow is best. Me and my sisters did it all the time to keep Father from beating us for moping."

Then she looked pointedly at Jon and stabbed the fabric with her needle, not even watching her fingers. "If you've been crying all night, your sisters get your bowl of snow for you first thing in the morning. To protect you." Then she snipped her thread between her teeth, threw Sam's mended robe onto his bed, and said, "Little Sam, it's time to go, sweetpea. Big Sam and Lord Jon are going to start telling scary stories now and we don't want to be here."

"Monster stories?" the little boy asked, looking worried, and took his mother's hand.

"Aye," she said, "And little boys don't need to hear monster stories."

Together, they swept out of the room, and Sam sat looking blank and sad at the door swinging shut behind them. Then, he heaved himself rapidly to his feet and said frantically, "I'm going after them, you'll see yourself out, all right?" and he was out the door, too.

Jon sat in his own kind of shock in the now-silent room, the crackling and shifting of the burning logs in the grate the only sounds.

If Dany was crying herself to sleep at night, or _ all night _, and Missandei was bringing her snow every time Jon left her rooms--

She could not be indifferent to him. 

She had to still--

Didn't she?

He leapt up, ready to mindlessly sprint to her rooms, gather her up, go on his knees before her, beg her forgiveness, just make her _ see _ him again—  
  
And then he stopped himself. 

Nothing had changed. 

He started pacing the room. She was still his blood. It would still be an abomination to couple with her. That she still loved him must be something he held in his heart, but he could do nothing with it except resolve to spare her more pain, and serve her more carefully and faithfully. He owed her his life, and home, and people. He would not make them both long again for things that could never be. He would not hurt her more. He would be again as he was in the Night's Watch, then--alone, dutiful, and serving with his whole being. It was brutal and cold, but it was all the life a man like him could hope for. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, now you know. The title of this story, and its entire theme, is about what women do to keep themselves safe and functional and empowered when they're heartbroken and endangered in a misogynistic culture. It's about how they help themselves, and how good women in their lives rally around them to help protect them. It's also about subverting the male gaze. Women live their lives swimming--and sometimes drowning--in an ocean of male opinion, perspectives, and power. The narrative is literally "the bowl of Snow"--everything contained inside Jon, who is obsessively observing and opining about the external result of what Dany is going through and how she handles it in her uniquely powerful way, with the help of her people who love her. The narrative is seemingly male gaze, but as a woman creator, I get to explicate the angst that his choices (and the choices of the all-male Se08 writers) cause him, and make him bow down to the power that is Dany. I love Jon--I really, really do--and, I literally wrote this story to heal my experience of Se08. So, I took the true power from the men, do my best to make them deal with the logic of the situation they've created, and then heal the relationships in some realistic way that redeems as many people as I can. <3
> 
> (This is a compilation of some things I've been mentioning in comments for this chapter that people seemed to find useful. If you want to see the story differently, brilliant! Be your own creator.)


	15. The Celebration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, my experiment with updating on a schedule was an immediate failure! I'm going back to 1-3 times per week on this one, like the weirdo I am. 
> 
> My wonderful beta, anread, who has my heart and constantly brings a fresh, exciting perspective to this work, really made this chapter work. Her comments, and yours, dear readers, made me rethink some of my characterizations, hence the rewrites this week. The next chapter is in much better shape, though, and you'll see it soon. Thank you so much for you comments and kudos. I was super stoked at how many people seem to have reread the fic this week, and I hope this chapter pleases at least some of you as much as it did me.

Jon lay awake through the night. In his solitary bed, he stared up into the smoke-blackened rafters, blood surging with shame and pain and love, like a dark sea rolling in a storm. Dany's face, smooth and calm or twisted in agony, stared back at him every time he closed his eyes. 

All these weeks, while Queen Daenerys of House Targaryen had been gracious and glowing, a paragon of royal power, Dany, his_ Dany, _ had been weeping after they spoke. She'd lain awake, just as he was doing now, through long, miserable nights. And, thanks to him, she’d had been living like a spy in her own kingdom, having to show a false face to nearly everyone around her just to survive. 

What had it cost her, to have loved him? What was it costing her now, to plan to marry another?

All that he knew was that he'd failed her, in the cruelties he'd spoken to her, in the hard truths he'd failed to speak to the Northern lords and his siblings. He'd sworn to serve her when he'd seen her magnificent, selfless bravery, but how well had he served her, really?

He hadn't defended her to the Northern lords, not well enough. He'd thought he was following Ned Stark's example with them, letting them complain and yank at the reins like stubborn nags, so they'd come around in their own time and then become just as stubborn about their loyalty to her as they had been about rejecting her before. It was the way of the Starks, to respect a bannerman's strength so that the strength would eventually be one's own. But unlike Dany and Jon, Ned Stark had been born to a name they'd obeyed and admired for thousands of years. And in the years when Jon had watched him lead, he hadn’t been at war. Ned Stark had had the time to work at a glacial pace with nobles like Lord Harclay, and had so many allies that the hatred of one, like Lady Dustin, cost him nothing but a headache. 

Jon tossed, punching the pillows with his fists to try to make them comfortable again, and thought to himself,_ But that isn't why I failed her. _

He stared into the black of the room, lit only by the glow of banked coals._  
_ _  
_ _ I was afraid. _

Every time a noble had sneered and ranted about _ foreigners _ and _ savages _ and _ outsiders, _ Jon had gone cold. He'd sealed his mouth. He'd shrugged off. His chest had ached where a trusted lad of 14 had stabbed him through the heart, and he’d seen in his mind a crowd of assassins at Dany’s back.

It wasn't Ned Stark's fault that his manner of leading had failed. Ned Stark wasn't serving Daenerys Targaryen, and Ned Stark had never been murdered by his own people. 

The man he'd worshipped, who'd led with pensive, somber patience all Jon's life, had been to war, had fought for the country and the people he'd loved, but he hadn't feared treachery at every turn. He hadn't lived with the knife scars of his own men's blades all over his living body. He hadn't died knowing his work was unfinished, and then been raised back up in terror.

A terrible truth settled into Jon’s body, like an illness: if Jon was going to serve her--his beloved and his Queen--as he should, he'd have to live as if he weren't afraid to die again. He’d have to live as if he weren’t afraid of betrayal.

He didn't know if he was man enough to do it.

He flipped onto is belly, and pressed his face into the warm, rough pillow, as if into a warm body. He'd failed her with Sansa, too, and Sam. For good or ill, they were both as close to him as his own clothes, but in not choosing her over them, he'd chosen them over her. He'd grown up hated and suspected under his own roof, his boy's heart blighted like fruit touched by hard frost. He'd accepted that pain for so long that he'd been willing to cleave to any member of his pack that would have him. _The lone wolf dies while the pack survives, _Ned Stark had said a hundred times or more. But when had Sansa not turned on him or cast him out the moment she had chance or reason, or the moment she hadn’t needed him? Jon was a lone wolf whether he willed it or no--until he’d been with Dany. When he’d had her love at his back, he'd been nigh invincible, and then the moment he’d severed himself from it, he'd left that strength behind.

John heard a rustle and Ghost, who’d been sleeping by the fire, rose up, blotting out the dim orange light with his big body for a moment, and strolled to the bed. Without even looking at Jon, he leapt heavily onto the mattress and curled around Jon’s feet, settling his enormous head by Jon’s hand. He looked up at Jon and whined, and Jon could feel his need for a stroke and scratch. _ We are a pack together, _ his wolf seemed to say, and groaned as Jon buried his fingers in Ghost’s fur, massaging and scritching around the remaining hand-sized ear. His red-eyed, one-time runt of the litter, the little outcast, had somehow grown up to be the one who survived, the one who remained, and the strongest.  
  
_ All Ghost needed was a chance, _ he thought, _ and someone to love him. _ _  
_ _  
_ Ghost licked his hand and grunted. _ You, _ the direwolf seemed to think. _ I needed _ you _ to love me. _ _  
_ _  
_ That struck at Jon’s heart. Being chosen was still so bloody hard.  
  
He put it out of his mind, and let the wolf’s warmth and size and presence comfort him.  
  
Still petting Ghost, he let himself settle back on the pillows. The comfort he took in his other half settled him, made him less mad with grief and shame, more able to think. Maybe if he was to help Dany as she deserved, he’d have to live as if she were still with him, as if love--even if only that of his beasts and Arya, and those few others he could trust to let in--weren’t entirely gone. As if he weren't afraid to lose what little he had left. 

When the sun rose the next morning, he had no plans, only a resolve to change.

What time he had left before they marched South, he would use for Dany as best he could.

* * *

  
  
In the following days, Jon put many hours into making quiet inroads for Dany with the Northern Lords, especially the ones who most annoyed him. The tedious conversations and teeth-grinding process of making peace with the cantankerous highborns was an unpleasant business, but it seemed to do a little good, if only for now. He also pondered how to solve the problem of Sansa, with whom he made little progress. His tactic of building up Dany to her and trying to make his sister see reason usually did little more than make her ill-tempered.

At the same time, the bustle in the smithy and among the artisans streaming in and out of Dany's chambers increased, and then rose to a fever pitch on the morning the Queen announced that in four days' time there would be a wedding ceremony. Not for her, thank all the Gods, but for three Dothraki _ kos, _ commanders, who were marrying spearwives who’d decided to remain behind after Tormund and the rest marched back north. Jon couldn't begrudge them the celebration, since the horselords had lent so much muscle to Winterfell's rebuilding process, and he forced himself not to begrudge the fact that he was required to attend. 

Dany herself had sent him a note, saying that the Dothraki would consider it a great slight if their hosts, including his siblings, did not come, gifts in hand. He pondered absenting himself for just that reason, in hopes that it would keep the Dothraki from thinking him a favorable rival to their Khaleesi, but he would have to fight alongside them in the South and didn't want an arakh to the back in revenge for his poor manners. 

The wedding itself would be fascinating, at least, from Dany's descriptions of her own--vibrant, violent, and exotic. However, the idea of sitting at a bloody marriage ceremony next to her suitors and a carping Sansa was barely more palatable than the fact that he'd be doing it amidst a crowd of killers who were considering assassinating her because of him. 

On that day, though, he and his siblings slowly made their way, at the pace of Bran's bumping wheelchair, toward the Dothraki camp, servants carrying their gifts of beaver cloaks for the marrying couples. He'd known the couples would make their vows to each other alone, then kick off a massive feast, but since his party was arriving at the appointed time, he was surprised to hear some kind of celebratory ruckus already well underway. They had heard Daenerys' carrying voice as they left the keep, and then a roar almost as thunderous as a dragon's cry, but sounding as if it were made of thousands upon thousands of voices, combined with the crash of weapons on steel. 

Sansa stopped, putting her hand on Arya's arm to halt her progress with Bran's wheelchair. 

"What's happening, Bran?" Sansa demanded to know. "I don't like the sound of this."

Bran seemed utterly relaxed. "The Queen gave the Unsullied a gift," he murmured. "It's no harm to us."

"The Unsullied?" she asked. "I thought this ceremony was for the Dothraki."

"They agreed to share their celebration," Bran said, "when they found out what the gift was."

"Did you know about this?" she demanded to Jon.

"No," he said evenly, "but I'm not worried." He did wonder what kind of gift in the world could wring a commotion like that out of the taciturn eunuchs.

"And you?" she asked Arya.

"A bit," she said, with her tiny smile. "Rumors." She glanced at Jon. He'd made her swear under the heart tree that she was truly keeping the Queen's confidences these days, and she'd kept her word, even with him.

"Well, I've heard more than rumors, and I'm already excited," came a familiar and unwontedly cheerful voice from behind them. 

They spun around to see Tyrion Lannister, perhaps a bit paler than usual from lack of sun, but sober, well-kempt, and richly dressed in black and red, stumping over the ground toward them, accompanied by Sam and Davos, who had Gilly on his arm. The Free woman was dressed in a rather tight, but incongruously grand bronze-colored silk dress.

Jon greeted them all, mood lifting immediately, and said to the Lannister, "Good to see you out, friend. You're a free man again?"

The former Hand nodded. "I am," he said. "And even more humbled than usual."

"How did you manage to convince her to let you out?" Sansa asked. "I thought she'd let you rot away forever like her other prisoners."

_ "Sansa--" _Jon started, but Tyrion waved his hand dismissively, and his mouth took on an ironical little quirk. 

"The Queen's no fan of rotting, My Lady," he calmly corrected. "Her punishments tend to be of the swift and hot variety. If they're of the sort one survives, they cool down rather quickly. I'm free, and thanks to their willingness to give up a variety of valuable things I suggested, my brother and Ser Bronn are in better conditions as well."

Jon felt a wash of relief that Tyrion, infinitely more convincing than himself, was making to deal with her. Jon had learned plenty from the dwarf in the past, and was happy to watch and learn now.

Arya said, "They gave up Cersei's security information," eyes lit with a scheming glint Jon didn't like. "And the rest of the Red Keep's?"

Tyrion cocked his head and looked at her thoughtfully, not losing the little smile under his thick beard. "Among other things," he agreed. 

Davos, also Dany's firm ally, interjected, "I may have unpolished manners, my lords and ladies, but I'm not eager to arrive late to a Dothraki wedding, especially one hosted by our Queen. Shall we go on?"

They all started to move again, and Sansa dropped in between Jon and Tyrion. She looked at her former husband skeptically. "Are you pretending that the Queen doesn't hold grudges?"

Tyrion craned his neck to look up at her as he walked and said, "You'd be surprised. She's a busy woman, and concerned with justice. Hanging onto slights is an inefficient use of one's time, and rarely contributes to making a better world."

"Perhaps it's easier," Sansa said acidly, "when one has the means to punish whomever one likes, however one likes, whenever one likes, at any whim."

Jon barely stopped himself from barking at her, but Tyrion looked up at her with real curiosity. "Do you think the queen lacks the habit of abnegation?"

"Abny-what?" Gilly asked, peering around Davos.

"Self-denial, My Lady," Tyrion supplied over his shoulder. "An essential quality in good rulers." He hopped a little to clear a rut, and then turned back to Sansa. "I assure you, the dragons and armies may look like hammers to which everything else would appear a nail, but you weren't in Essos while she was ruling her cities. She made any number of gut-wrenching compromises to avoid violence, at great cost to herself."

"I should like to hear of these compromises," Ser Davos said, shortening his stride to match Tyrion's. "I’ve kept counsel with Her Grace lately, but I've not been privy to many of her stories."

"Likely since most of her tales are about her killing great swaths of nobles," Sansa snipped.

Tyrion sighed as they thumped and strode over the rough ground, wending between the flapping horsehide tents that were all currently empty of people. He said carefully, "It's true, she is far more concerned with smallfolk than nobles. It's a reasonable position for a person who spent half her childhood on the run, eating crusts stolen from the pig troughs of alehouses."

Jon feels sick at the thought, but a kind of fierce admiration for her ability to transform herself from a desperate urchin to the most regal, powerful woman in the world.

"Do you actually believe that?" Sansa asked, exasperated. "She's a _ Targaryen. _Her name alone would've gained her entry to noble houses all over the East."

"Believe it?" Tyrion sniffed. "My father received monthly reports on the status of Viserys Targaryen, the Beggar King, and the half-starved baby sister he carted about on his back from great house to great house. They were turned away as often as they were let in. Having a reputation for attracting the Good King Robert's assassins wears even the most sycophantic welcomes rather thin."

Sansa said nothing in response, and Tyrion went on, "No, she's rather acutely aware that we rich tend to bob back to the top of whatever currents tug us off our moorings, while the poor have no fat to keep them afloat. She doesn't like to watch people drown, unless they've been holding other people under, of course." 

Perhaps to take the attention off Sansa's poor manners, Ser Davos prompted, "Was there going to be a story, M'Lord?"

Tyrion glanced between Davos and Sansa, and said, "I supposed I could tell you the tale of when she once denied herself the dragons themselves."

Sansa looked at him sharply. "She didn't use them in war?"

Tyrion shook his head. "Nor in a very uneasy and violent sort of peace, of the kind where many grudges were due. I wasn't there for it, but any number of her people told me about it.

Sansa raised one slender eyebrow at him to indicate he should go on. 

"It was a time when the former slave masters in Meereen were doing their best to sabotage Her Grace's rule. The sons of wealthy slaver families were going out in masked gangs to murder innocent freedmen, including women and children. They were also killing her Unsullied, great mobs of them attacking a single man caught alone, usually having drawn him out with the screams of some other former slave." He put his hands in his pockets against the chilly air and said, "During this conflict, she'd been seeing petitioners every day to create compromises the people could live with, and at the end of a day's audiences, a very poor goatherd came trembling to the base of her throne." Tyrion's voice became pained at the memory of what he'd been told. "She welcomed him, and he came weeping at her feet, explaining that he'd been herding his flocks when an enormous black shadow swept over the fields, and flame and death rained down. She expected that he simply needed recompense for a herd that one of her children had eaten, which she would have provided more than generously, but then the man unwrapped the bundle in his arms. It was the roasted, black skeleton of a very small girl, his little daughter who had been playing among his animals when Drogon came down."

They whole party of them stopped to stare at him in horror. Even Arya looked stricken. 

"She should've killed all three of them, right then," Sansa whispered. 

Gilly turned on her. "It was an accident! Would you kill your own children for a bad accident?!"

Sam put his hand gently on Gilly's arm, and she shook it away, glaring at Sansa.

Tyrion looked at them all, took in their expressions, and simply nodded sadly. "The dragons were young then, and wild, and barely under her control. The Queen made great efforts to honor the dead girl and made sure the family would be cared for for life. Then, she locked her two smaller dragons in the dungeons under the Great Pyramid of Meereen, in the midst of the uprising. Drogon seemed to know what she was doing and flew away, and did not return."

"Then how did she stop the uprising?" Sam asked. "Assuming she did?"

"She proposed to a man she despised," Tyrion said, "the heir to and defender of ancient slaver families. I didn't know Hizdahr zo Loraq, but I heard he was not the sort of fellow who would ever be able to capture a woman's heart, nor was he inclined toward such."

Sansa looked at Tyrion with furrowed brows, as if trying to solve an especially tricky riddle. Jon just ached for Dany all over again. Her loving, fiery heart, sacrificed over and over on the altars of rule and fate.

"Did she marry him?" Sansa finally asked. 

Tyrion shook his head and started walking again, and they all followed along. "No," he said, "though not through any fault of her own. After the betrothal was announced, the killings stopped for a while, especially after her betrothed convinced her to reopen the city's fighting pits. It was an act she considered utterly loathsome but apt to help cement the peace. During the opening fights on the morning before her wedding, the masked rebels attempted to assassinate her and the whole royal party. They ended up killing dozens of freedmen and women, the Queen's betrothed, several of her friends, and most of her personal guard. I was there for that, and it was a bloodbath." 

They were nearing the Dothraki camp, and a wild drumbeat overlaid with skirling Free Folk pipes started up. "We'd better hurry," Tyrion said. "That's the signal that the wedding march will begin soon."

Jon took in Sansa's troubled face, and wondered what she'd taken from that story. She'd known Dany had married badly the first time, surely. What was it that touched her heart about the idea that the Dragon Queen had chosen to marry reluctantly and dutifully the second time? Had she genuinely not known that Daenerys could be selfless and stoic, as well as bold and powerful? He shook his head, and thought to himself that maybe he'd been telling his sister all the wrong things about Her Grace.

When they reached the crowd, Tyrion threaded them through to its center, where a great circle of glowing braziers and cook pots surrounded a cleared arena. In it was an astonishing sight. Among the milling crowds of Dothraki were a handful of Free Folk and thousands of Unsullied. Many of the usually utterly stoic soldiers were drinking the Dothraki's hideous fermented mare's milk, a few were attempting to dance awkwardly or sing-shout in Valyrian, and a handful were even clutching each other and crying. Hundreds more simply knelt in front of the dais silently, directly in front of the seated Queen, making an odd, three-fingered salute across their chests Jon had never seen before.

"Oh my," Sam breathed. "I never thought I'd see it."

"What are they doing?" Arya asked. 

"I just can't believe it," Sam whispered. "I've only seen drawings in a book at the Citadel. The Unsullied have a secret religion, one the first Unsullied came up with, generations and generations ago. They're making the sign of it, like when people clasp their hands to pray in a Sept."

"Are they... _ worshipping _Her Grace?" Davos asked.

Sam shook his head wonderingly. "I don't know. Their god _ is _ called the Lady of Spears, but they were supposed to kill themselves rather than reveal their worship of her, so that the masters couldn't take her from them as well."

Jon said softly, "They've no more masters now, thanks to her."

Tyrion said, "And, yes, I believe their goddess, in her own way, sits before them now. Or, she might as well be, considering what Her Grace has just given them."

Dany herself was sitting in the center of the highest dais, an heir at each hand, but luminous as if she were sitting alone in a great column of sunlight. She was still and silent, eyes shimmering with feeling, looking down solemnly on the rows and rows of her adopted sons kneeling at her feet. She was dressed as he'd never seen her before, the dense, lush black of her sable maiden cloak thrown over the shoulders of a woven grass bodice that she wore above tight horsehide trousers that were belted with a king's ransom worth of gold medallions. The bodice pushed up an amazing, surprisingly lush swell of breasts, and her arms were bare except for a dozen thick gold bracelets around her biceps and wrists. Painted over her shoulders and down her chest were vivid blue slashes, like cold lightning, and he saw that many of her Dothraki had matching swaths of blue paint on their faces or arms.

"She's dressed like a savage," Sansa said, with surprisingly more curiosity than venom. 

"Like a Khal," Arya corrected. "The blue was the color of her husband's khalasar and the dead dragon's fire," she added. "I was there when she ordered the paint."

The dais had a number of empty seats in several rows, and a Dothraki woman wordlessly signaled them over and directed them where to sit. His entire group was pointed toward seats on the platform immediately below Dany's feet. As her men lifted Bran into place and got him settled, Dany turned her eyes to them and looked at Jon. The vulnerability there was like deep pool, quenching and real and beautiful. He would've given a year of his life to have touched her in that moment.

Then, Grey Worm, who had been kneeling in the front row of men, took her gaze by drawing his dagger, slamming it against his breastplate, and calling, "MHYSA!" 

"MHYSA!" the men behind him yelled.

"Riña hen azantyr!" Grey Worm called.

"Ilva dāria, īlva muña, īlva jaesa!" the men responded, all the Unsullied in the crowd joining in. 

Dany nodded, and in a ringing voice cried, "ñuha jorrāelatan riñar!" and the kneeling men rose as one and dispersed into the crowd.

Now seated behind Jon, Gilly leaned forward and asked Tyrion, "So, what'd she give 'em?"

"Home," Tyrion said quietly, looking out over the people. "A promise of one, anyway," he amended. "She announced that when she takes the Iron Throne, she will provide a homeland in the South and permanent pensions to all Unsullied over the age of forty-five who wish to retire from her service."

_Her great heart,_ Jon thought again, wonderingly. If all went remotely well in the southern war, it would cost her a fortune to fulfill that promise, but he had no doubt she'd move heaven and earth to do it.

"It's a, well, a _ generous _ gesture," Sam said hesitantly, "but forty-five seems rather young." 

Tyrion informed him, "Considering that these men were enslaved and most brutally trained since their infancy, and many already carry the scars of horrible wounds, their careers would actually be quite long. Besides, it's the novelty of the idea as much as anything. No Unsullied has ever retired or grown old. They were expected to die for their owner or be sold to a fighting pit if they had the very rare good luck of surviving long enough to reach middle age. She's offering them their conception of heaven on earth."

Davos made a pleased grunt. "It's damned clever politics, is what it is,” he said. “Her advisors, among which I am pleased to be included, discussed it at some length. The Unsullied were devoted to 'er before. Now it'll verge on fanaticism. Any Dothraki mutterin' about her now is goin' to get a faceful o' spear."

Tyrion murmured, "Quite true, though it will not take away the issue of, well..." he looked at Jon uncomfortably, "potential rival leaders. She must prove herself to the Dothraki, not outsiders, for that."

The conversation cut short as the drumbeat changed to something like a solemn march, and the three married _ Kos _ and their spearwives strutted out, hand in hand. Dany stood, and the rest of the nobles followed along. She stepped down to her adopted people and went from one couple to the next, quietly talking to them. Each couple was grinning and seemed to make some sort of agreement with her, then she returned to her seat, with the couples following to sit on a second tier of platforms at the nobles' feet.

The drums started back up again, this time wild and thumping, with a rhythm that pulled at the feet and made one want to stamp along with them. Jon chanced a look at Dany, and she'd developed a look of almost savage avidity, the calm, heartstruck goddess of the Unsullied gone. 

Women and men of the Khalasar, some with people of other races in hand, poured out into the open circle, some merely conversing and drinking, but many writhing in shockingly lascivious ways that were surely dances, but unlike any the North had ever seen. A long line of other Dothraki began filing through with enormous platters of food.

"Ah, delightful," Tyrion said, peering down at the offerings the servers began loading onto small trestles before them. "It _ isn't _ all Dothraki fare."

Dany leaned forward, showing a great deal of white cleavage, and said to her former Hand in a rather cheerfully bloodthirsty tone, "What, you're not longing for a barely seared hare's head dressed with fresh goats' blood?"

He looked fondly at his Queen, clearly deeply contented to be back in her favor, and nodded deferentially, "Your Grace. While I enjoy many traditional delicacies, I'm afraid I could stomach the Dothrakis' favorites only if they met a great deal of wine in my belly for additional marinade."

Arya looked up at the Queen with slightly narrowed eyes and asked, "Khaleesi, what's the worst thing you ever ate for your people?" 

Clearly appreciating hearing her old title, Dany laughed at the ridiculously impertinent question, a real laugh, like Jon hadn't seen in a long time. "A raw, still-bleeding stallion's heart as big as my head, and I had to do it on a stage before every important personage of the Great Grass Sea. I had nothing but my hands to hold it with and my teeth to rip it apart."

"That may be the most revolting thing I've ever heard," Sansa said, with an almost admiring disgust.

"Without pukin'?" Gilly asked, aghast. 

The Khaleesi nodded and leaned over to Gilly to stage-whisper, _ "And I was with child." _

"How did you not hurl?" Gilly wondered. "I couldn't even look at innards when I was expectin'."

Dany said, "I didn't because I couldn't. It would've been a bad omen--such weakness would've indicated I was carrying a _ girl." _She and Gilly shared a look of the ripest possible sarcasm, while the corner of Arya's mouth twitched under her fierce eyes, and even Sansa seemed to be suppressing a bitter little smile.

Interestingly, Jon noticed that for the moment, Dany seemed to be utterly ignoring the Southron lords seated on either side of her, who'd been listening in with obvious squeamishness. Then, Martell twisted his mouth and reinserted himself in the conversation by asking with feigned innocence, "And these fascinating dances we see, Your Grace, did you learn to perform them as well?"

The dancing Dothraki women were sinuously thrusting their interesting bits at all comers, simultaneously athletic, graceful, and lewd, and several were on their knees with clothed men rutting onto them from behind. Dany looked at the Prince with an expression Jon found impossible to read.

"When I lived among them, I was married and could not dance,” she said evenly. “It would have signalled that I was seeking to take a man then and there, and if two men approached me, they would have had to fight to the death for my favor."

Martell leaned toward her, nostrils flaring at her answer and he replied, "A most... stirring scenario, is it not? And if there were... three, four... or even more, fighting over you?"

The conversation was shamefully inappropriate to be having outside of a brothel, but Dany looked at Martell without even a blush, and said in a rather hard tone, "Then the best fighter, most likely the one with the finest _ weapon, _ would've won."

Jon felt a surge of power, and from the far edge of the camp came Drogon's unmistakeable roar. Impulsively, he reached out to Rhaegal, and his higher, longer shriek followed, loud enough even here to hurt the ears, making the Prince flinch. Dany looked at Jon sharply, lips open in surprise, and for just a moment, it was as if they were standing back on the castle walls before the battle for the dawn, already torn asunder but still ready to fight and die together, no matter what came at them.

Then she blinked, snapped her jaw shut, and the moment was broken. She stood abruptly, gestured out over her people, and cried, "Ajjin kisha will chomokh tih kos ma spearwives ma kishi azhori!"

Missandei, who was seated at the edge of the platform, stood as well, and quietly translated to the Westerosis, "Now we will honor my commanders and their spearwives with gifts."

Over the next two hours, the wedding guests ate and danced while hundreds came forth to pile gifts at the feet of the married couple. There were weapons for both the men and the women, jewelry, furs, clothing, preserved food, flasks of drink, and exotic trinkets of various kinds. Quite a number of people also provided livestock, which were paraded past the couple and then hauled into a makeshift surround. Seemingly anyone related to the couples by blood, tribe, or obligation came before them to offer something. And, to honor the brides' traditions, each person was required to heartily praise and then hug the couple, something the grooms seemed uneasy with at first, but with increasing doses of mare's milk, came to boozily delight in. After the first hour, in fact, they began shouting praise right back at their well-wishers, and lifting even the heftiest of their hulking tribesmen off their feet while pounding their backs. Jon knew this ceremony would've been nothing like the quiet words before the heart tree he'd been expecting to have with Dany, but it was moving and beautiful, and tugged at his guts nonetheless.

When it was the nobles' turn to offer gifts, Jon and his siblings, being of importance second only to Daenerys, made their offerings at the end. Their lush cloaks, with a bit of fine embroidery by Sansa, along with words that Missandei had helped them compose earlier, went over extremely well. Sansa went rigid in the hugs, but the drunken brides in particular gripped her firmly and whispered into her ear, sometimes motioning back at the dais, and she actually smiled slightly. 

Then, after he and his family returned to their seats, Daenerys stood, and every Dothrakaan--warrior, camp follower, and drummer alike--all of whom must've been waiting for this, went silent. The dancers, who'd broken off their revels a bit before, were still panting and sweating on the sidelines, and shrugging back into their furs. The sudden quiet made Jon's ears ring a bit. There was a whickering of horses from behind the little hillock the dais was on, and then the crowd parted to reveal a large, covered wagon being drawn by a team of horses. The wagon stopped at the edge of the crowd, its mysterious contents unrevealed.

The Khaleesi climbed down from her seat and led a number of Northern servants from beside the wagon to the married couples. In front of the first pair, she took from a servant a yellow bundle, which she shook out to reveal a shirt and pants made of the Myrish armor silk, both sized for the bride. The spearwife whooped unabashedly and threw her arms around the Khaleesi. From the next servant, she then took a massive arakh with a shining black handle, and handed it to the groom. A rush of whispers passed through the Dothraki in the crowd, and people edged in closer. The warriors, especially, seemed agitated and almost ready to run at her. Jon looked around worriedly, sword hand flexing, but the ever-present Unsullied guards seemed unconcerned. She repeated her gifts with the other two couples, and the horselords in the crowd seemed to grow more excited with each gifting. Then, the brides and grooms stood in a line behind Daenerys, holding their gifts as she turned to the crowd. Missandei stepped up beside her, ready to translate.

"Ma Dothrakquoyi!" the Khaleesi began, and Missandei echoed, "My bloodriders!"

Jon noticed movement and saw that Tyrion was rocking back on his heels and fiercely grinning. 

Daenerys went on, "On the shores of the Great Grass Sea, under the Mother of Mountains, I called you blood of my blood. Did you answer?"

The Dothraki warriors in the crowd slapped their chests and shouted an affirmative as one. 

"By ancient law, I called you, and by ancient law, you accepted me. You vowed to fight beside me and guard my way, not three, but one hundred thousand, worthy of my mount. Are you still worthy?"

The crowd roared.

"I commanded you to follow me here, to tear down the stone houses of my enemies, to bring all of Westeros into my Khalasar. But I led your charge not to camps of men in steel dresses. I led you to the greatest enemy of all--Death itself."

The cry in response was deafening.

"What did I bring you?"

The Dothraki yelled something back, fists in the air. Dany stood as if absorbing the power of their words, and cried back to them the same. 

"Victory over Death!" Missandei translated, then added the Khaleesi's next words: "Now and always!"

The servants took down the sides of the wagon, and Jon saw that it was stacked to the rim with black-handled arakhs. 

"These weapons are forged from the steel of Death's soldiers, and their handles are made of the bones of Viserion the Sacrifice, he who was the mount of the King of the Dead, and defeated by my fire. Use them in battle, then pass them to your sons, and their sons, and down your line for a thousand years. They are the scythes that cut down the Ghost Grass."

To a man, the Dothraki slapped their chests, raised their fists, and bellowed, "Khaleesi, Khaleesi, Khaleesi!"

Northron servants, quite a number of them this time, came from behind the wagon and started unloading it, passing arakhs to the warriors who surged forward to claim them. The wagon was rapidly emptied, and another followed it, then another, and another, and more, until an arakh was handed to seemingly every Dothrakaan who had fought the dead. Jon was deeply uneasy to see that the now-armed, enormous men were crowding in around the Queen, swamping her in a dense, agitated crowd while brandishing their new weapons at the sky. He glanced over at Tyrion and Varys though, and both looked utterly chuffed. 

"What did she just do?" Sansa asked Tyrion suspiciously. "That obviously wasn't about wedding favors."

Tyrion said smugly, "She just guaranteed the loyalty of every Dothrakaan in Westeros."

"With a sword?" Sam asked. "They were quite nice gifts, really, but... well..."

Tyrion sipped his wine and said, "The arakh is a traditional gift from a Khal to his bloodriders, always three men who swear to defend their leader with their lives and--" He stopped, one eyebrow cocked, making sure all the nobles were paying proper attention. He leaned forward, head tilted, and went on, _ "And, _who swear that if their Khal is killed, they will avenge him personally and then follow him into death."

"So," Sansa said, "which ones are her real bloodriders?" Then her eyes got big. _ "No!" _she said, looking reluctantly impressed.

"Yes!" Tyrion crowed. "They bloody _ all _are! When Her Grace claimed her Khalasar after defeating the other Khals, she specifically asked every man who followed her to be her bloodrider. It was quite revolutionary, and they accepted. She just reminded them, very explicitly, that by doing so they had vowed to defend her unto death, and if she falls, that they'd agreed by the most ancient of their laws to personally avenge her and then kill themselves."

"Talk about motivation to prevent assassinations," Ser Davos said. "I told her it was a stroke of bloody genius."

"Was that _ your _ stroke of genius?" Sansa asked Tyrion. 

Tyrion sniffed. "No. Hers." Then he took a sip of wine and added more cheerfully, "I did come up with the idea of using Viserion's bones for the handles, though. Since the Queen hadn't previously given the traditional gifts that would cement the bloodrider relationship, the arakhs officially sealed their deal, as it were. Some men could conceivably have refused, though it would've looked bad for them. However, making the swords bloody priceless fixed that little problem. An arakh with a dragonbone handle would be worth riches no matter what, but the fact that it was forged from the weapons of the dead made it of incalculable significance. She essentially gave a thousand years of bragging rights to these men's families."

"And to be remembered is a kind of immortality," Bran intoned calmly. "That is why she said the swords would cut down the Ghost Grass that makes up their underworld. Dothraki believe those who are remembered are not really dead."

Jon felt a swirl of emotion--admiration, and a profound relief that she'd taken the target off her own back and himself out of the position of rival, but also worry.

He asked quietly, "How did she feel about using her son's bones?"

Tyrion shrugged and drank again. "She fought me on it, of course. Who wouldn't?" He threw a candied date in his mouth and chewed vigorously. When he swallowed, he said in a voice meant mostly for Jon, "I reminded her, though, that Viserion loved her and would want his mother to live. If his remains would help keep her safe, of course he'd want her to use them."

"Did she use up all the dragonbone on the swords?" Sam asked tentatively.

"Oh, no," Tyrion said. "Viserion was enormous. There've been other--ahem, well, projects--but there's quite a bit left, plus all his fangs and claws."

"I'd like to examine some, if it's possible--even just scraps," Sam said. "It's supposed to have quite a number of magical properties. And, at the Citadel, I did some digging and composed a list of medicines that can be strengthened with the addition of powdered dragon's bone." 

Prince Quentyn clearly had been eavesdropping. He leaned far forward in his seat to join the conversation, saying, "I had always heard that the maesters of the Citadel had long lost interest in dragons and magic. How is is that you came to be so forward-thinking, my friend?"

Sam looked flustered. "Oh, well, I've always enjoyed such talk, from stories and such? But well, there was an incident. When I was a man of the Night's Watch, I went on a Great Ranging with, um, Lord Jon and the Lord Commander at the time, and we found a cache of dragonglass weapons. We were attacked by the Night King's army, and I escaped to where Gilly was. I took her with me, and a White Walker came after her baby. I stabbed the Walker with one of the dragonglass daggers, and he exploded into shards of ice. That, well... that would be enough to convince anybody, I suppose."

"You're a Sworn Brother?" Lord Tyrell exclaimed. "I had no idea. Both you and Lord Jon are a credit to the kingdoms to have served."  
  
Over his shoulder, Ser Adrian leaned in with a look of hawkish interest at the mention of the Watch.

"Well, um, thank you," Sam said. "I didn't have a choice, but then again, most of the men on the Wall didn't."

Lord Tyrell sensibly held back from asking why Sam was forced to go, and instead said, "Just because a man is forced into a situation does not mean he cannot do great good once he arrives."

Thorne had to thrust his fat head in, and said, "Aye, and Her Grace would agree with you, I'm sure. She thought the traitor to Highgarden who sacked Lord Willas's homeland could've done great good at the Wall, but she had to execute him after the man refused to take the Black. The man and his heir both."

Jon saw Sam's eyes go huge and confused as he asked, _ "How's that?" _

"Lord Randyll Tarly, the only Targaryen loyalist commander who was never defeated by the Usurper's army," Ser Adrian growled. "Just months ago, the man turned on his sworn lords, Lord Willas's family, _ and Her Grace _ in favor of Mad Queen Cersei, the Seven only know why. His men stripped the Reach down to its bones, and when our Queen rained down fire and blood on them, he refused to kneel, and refused to take the Black at her command." He sneered, "He chose to _ die, _ the heir to his House alongside him, rather than 'lower himself' so far as to serve the realm alongside men like my uncle."

"That... that can't be so..." Sam said, voice going high with distress. He looked frantically at Jon. "She would've told me! Wouldn't she?"

"Why would Her Grace have told _ you?" _Thorne asked, making it clear he thought Sam far beneath the Queen's notice.

"Because..." Sam swallowed. "I am Samwell Tarly. I was heir to Horn Hill until my father sent me to the Wall because he preferred my brother, Dickon."

Tyrion glared briefly at Ser Adrian and then looked at Sam compassionately. He said, "I'm very sorry you had to hear it this way, Sam. I was there, and yes, Ser Adrian is telling the truth." 

Sam seemed to know he was making a scene, but he never could help himself when his emotions got stirred. "Are you telling me that my father decided to _ die _ rather than endure what he'd sent me to? And that Dickon stood beside him while he did it? _ Dickon _ chose _ death _ over serving alongside me?"

"Oh Sam..." Gilly said, all her hostility gone for the moment, and put her arm around his shoulder. Tears welled up in Sam's eyes, and Jon stood. 

"Can I walk you back, Sam?" he asked. Sam nodded his head, jowls wobbling, and stumbled out of his seat and away from the dais. Gilly followed hurriedly alongside him, her shiny dress flapping as she jumped over a puddle of horse piss to catch up with Sam. Jon jogged along beside them, not knowing what to say as Sam gave in to his tears.

Once they got clear of the crowds on the way back to the castle, Sam stopped in the middle of the cold, gusty camp and begged to know, chest heaving with sobs, "Jon, did you know? That they did that? That my brother, my little brother..."

Jon put a comforting hand on his shoulder and said, "No, Sam. I'm sorry."

"But why wouldn't she tell you? Why wouldn't she have told _ me?" _

"She didn't know you were in the Watch then," Gilly said patiently.

"But after, why not after?" Sam demanded. 

Gilly pursed her lips in purest frustration at the both of them. "Maybe because _ after _ was when her man decided she was an abomination, and half her people died along with her oldest friend, while she almost got _ kilt _ saving the world. And then there was the learnin' her own soldiers and her love's family were goin' to maybe kill her. _ And, _ you hated her."

_ Gods. _Jon’s heart ached with guilt for what she’d gone through.

"I didn't hate her," Sam insisted, and then said in a desperate rush, "Or, or maybe I did, because she killed my bloody family, of course I did, but... but this is..." His misery twisted, and rage filled his usually gentle face. _"...this is_ _horse shit!" _he screamed. "My lord father made it sound like he was sparing me death by sending me to the Wall, calling it a bloody _mercy _for a coward like me. But he evidently thought it was _worse _than the death he'd planned for me. _He _was the bloody coward, not me! _He _was the one who was afraid to face what I've faced, to endure what _I've_ endured, all the cold and the shit, and the blood and the fucking _scrubbing!_ He and bloody Dickon as well!" He started to pace, his maester's robes flapping in the frigid breeze blowing down off the Wall itself.  
  
He spun to face Jon and yelled, "You were buggering right, Jon! Dickon bloody Tarly, my sweet brother, who lapped up all of Father's pride and love without a thought for me, decided he'd rather die than serve where Father had sent me to suffer. He wouldn't have been a good lord at all, and he was a shit brother!"

"He had no abnegation," Gilly agreed.

They both stared at her for a moment, and then Jon simply nodded. "You deserved better. I am sorry they died, but--"

"Well at the moment, I'm not!" Sam cried. "I'm sure I will be later and hate myself for feeling so ill towards them, but bugger that now. The Queen gave defeated enemy commanders two honorable options, and when they insulted her and acted like arseholes, she had the right to do as she did. I hate it, and I'd never do it myself, but I'll also never deserve to sit the Iron bloody Throne, and she does." He looked guiltily at Jon. "No offense."

"None taken," he said. "I don't want the damned thing."

The three of them walked back to the castle together, Sam periodically bursting out with obscenity-laden screeds about how being powerful didn't equal being brave and how being sweet-voiced didn't mean being decent, and fuck all the writings of all the maesters about the inborn honor of noble lords.


	16. What They See

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew, this chapter is about fighting, and wow, it was a fight to get it written! The holidays are not an easy time to carve out writing time, and since I don't beat people up on the regular, it took weeks of research and rewriting to make this all-new (as opposed to recently edited) chapter come into being. That said, thank my wonderful beta anread if you like it, because she asked the question of what this fight would look like, and then helped me make it work.

_ Mother sends bird, _ Rhaegal thought at him, a twist of dragonish humor coloring the thought. _ Can eat? _

Jon immediately squinted down past Rhaegal's neck at the camp below them. He and his dragon had been riding the sky above the Wolfswood for a good three hours, and now they were nearly home to seek their meals. They'd been rehearsing attack moves against undeserving bluffs and cliffs all morning, leaving leagues of rock striped with scorch marks and Jon's entire body aching with the effort of staying mounted. They'd kept at it until his feet had learned the shapes of his dragon's hide well enough that neither he nor Rhaegal worried he was going to plummet to his death whenever they banked. Now his beard was heavy with ice, his ears ached from the pummeling wind, and Rhaegal was hungry. 

As Jon scanned the landscape below them, he spotted the distinctive patch of reddish fur that was Lord Willas' fox cloak, and beside it, almost invisible against the snow, was Dany in her white coat. Unthinkingly, he guided Rhaegal a little lower, and sure enough, Dany had on her forearm the bloody gorgeous golden eagle Tyrell had brought with him. She flung her arm into the air and the bird took off in powerful sweeps of wing that must've looked grand from the ground, but from up here, looked like the fragile twitching of a pull-toy. The small crowd gathered around them shifted, as if cheering.

Dany was shielding her face from the sun with one hand, facing away from them, watching the eagle angle up toward the clouds to hunt.

_ Can eat? _ Rhaegal asked again. _ Bird's man small. Not dragon. _

With a tang of bitter humor, Jon thought to him,_ It would please your mother far less than me, but you're a good lad._ _I'll get you some oxen when we land. _

When he approached the great hall for his own meal a good hour later, Rhaegal well provided for, Jon was surprised to see Sansa lingering alone at the high table, engrossed in a large book while she picked at the sumptuous Essosi fruits languishing on the plate in front of her. When he sat in his chair beside hers, she looked up at him, then narrowed her eyes.

"Why do you have ice in your eyebrows?" she asked, and swiped her napkin at his face, like she was his nursemaid.

He ducked away from her hand and waved her off. "I was flying. The air's colder up high," he said, and glanced at the book in front of her. The illustration, of a group of gaunt peasants gathered beseechingly around a tower with a well-fed lady in the window, was familiar. Ned Stark's favorite book.

"You're reading _ Songs of Winter?" _he asked and picked up a fresh linen to mop the icemelt off his own face. "You used to hate that book," he said, muffled from behind the cloth.

When he looked at her again, she shrugged her narrow shoulders and said, "It was a gift."

"A gift?" he asked, looking closer. The leather of the cover was brown, not Stark grey, and the peasants in the picture were less gaunt than he'd remembered, as if the painting had been copied by someone who'd never seen true hunger. "What happened to Father's copy?"

"Burned," she said. "The assassin that tried to kill Bran and Mother lit the library on fire for a distraction, and we lost a few hundred books. Lord Willas and I were talking about poetry and he offered me the copy he'd brought with him."

He felt his eyebrows involuntarily tick up. "Tyrell is giving you books of poetry?"

She flushed and testily speared a bit of melon. "There's nothing improper about it, so don't look at me that way. We both like poems, and the Queen doesn't. He wasn't depriving _ her _of it, if that's what you're getting at." She ate the melon and briefly closed her eyes in pleasure at the flavor as she chewed. Then she swallowed and said, not looking at Jon, "He gave me this one and a few others."

"I remember you used to call it 'that starvation book,'" he reminded her.

She sniffed, still looking at the page, "I also used to think I was going to marry a rich Southron and never see a real winter. Now I see why Father thought it was so good." 

He grunted and filled his plate with food. Anything that would give her perspective about the situation they were facing was fine by him, but if Tyrell was toying with her, he would end the man.

"Where's Arya?" he asked.

She rolled her eyes, "With the Queen, most likely. They were all out eagle hunting this morning, of all things."

"You like hawking--" Jon began.

"And Southrons," Arya added from immediately behind Sansa's chair, as if she'd emerged directly from the blazing hearth.

Startled, Sansa knocked over her cup of water and desperately snatched up the book before the liquid could wash over the tabletop and soak it. 

_ "Arya!" _she snapped, holding the hefty book high with both hands, letting the drink dribble onto her skirt instead. 

"Sorry, sister," Arya said coolly, but she instantly righted the cup with one hand and took up a napkin and brushed the water off Sansa's thick skirt with the other, then wiped the table neatly. She wadded up the soaked linen and tossed it with a splat onto a dirty plate for a servant to take. 

Arya sat and loaded a plate for herself, and Sansa laid a clean linen down and set the open book on top of it. 

When she’d gotten the book settled nicely, she said bitterly, "I don't like Southrons, or anything to do with them. I hate everything about the South and you know exactly why." 

"No," Arya said. "What you hated was being on the losing side."

All the air seemed to go out of the room. Sansa rounded on their sister and bared her teeth in instant fury. "I saw Father _ beheaded, _ they _ stripped me _ and _ beat me--" _

"That's what being on the losing side in war _ is," _ Ayra said flatly. "You've enjoyed yourself more since the Southrons got here than you have since you left for King's Landing. You love poetry and fine talk and pretty people with good manners. You were _ laughing _with Lord Willas and Ser Meadows last night. When was the last time you laughed? How many years has it been?"

Sansa lips were trembling and her face was white. "Don't you dare associate me with the South just because I was having a conversation with _ the Queen's _ guests. _ I _ didn't bring them here, _ I _ don't want them here--" She was getting more and more wrought, and Arya stopped her flat with her next words.

"It's good to be happy."

Sansa's teeth clicked shut, then she choked out, "You have no idea what you're saying."

Arya said with her quiet intensity, "I'm saying what everyone who cares about you is saying. We want you to be happy. And you need to either choose the right side, or stay out of politics." 

It all dropped into place. Jon reached over with one fingertip and flipped the page in the book. In the next, equally familiar illustration, the snowdrifts were higher, the starving peasants were all armed, and they were climbing up the tower to get to the pretty lady's window.

Sansa looked down at the book, the gift from Lord Willas, with sudden realization, as if she'd just noticed it was made of rats and spiders. She shoved her chair back with a screech of wood on stone and fled the room, leaving the book and her fruit behind. 

Jon looked down at the illustration a moment more. Father read this book all the time. He could stand to read it again himself. Finally, he shut the book and wrapped the linen around it to keep it clean. He said to Arya, "I don't know how you got so smart, but you're scaring me a little."

She huffed through her nose. "Not so smart. I let my temper take me. I should've just waited and let her read the book. She was enjoying it."

Jon took a few bites of his own fruit, which might've been the best food that had ever passed his lips, and said, "It was a good message. Hearing it aloud won't hurt her."

"Much," Arya said. "She doesn't really need any more hurt."

He shook his head and said, "Too bad she thinks having power means not having pain. It's the opposite"

Arya looked at him with those sharp little eyes of hers. "No, she thinks having power means she can control her pain. It's different." She nipped off a bite of toasted bread, leaving a little smile-shape behind in her slice, and said, "And it's mostly true."

Jon pondered this as he ground a bit more black pepper, another precious gift from the Queen, onto his meat. "Being in charge never meant that for me. It just meant more pain about bigger decisions. Ever since I was elected Lord Commander, I've agonized about every choice. I've caused battles. I got thousands of people killed. I got me killed. I got Viserion killed."

He reached for his ale cup just as she reached for hers, and they downed them together. Sometimes she felt like a little changeling, and sometimes, like now, they were alike as two peas.

"But you did those things to save people," she said quietly. "You used your power to save everyone."

"Doesn't mean it was less painful," he said.

She looked at him steadily, then took another drink. "Good thing Starks are tough."

"I'm not a Stark," he said, remembering another time he'd said that, long ago. He resignedly stabbed another bite of melon. 

Arya snorted and swiped the pale, dripping fruit right off his fork with her own, though her own plate was heaped with it. She snapped it up, and with a half-full mouth said, "Yes, you are."  
  
____________________  
  
  
"Your dirks can keep you alive if you lose your shield and your main weapon in battle," Jon said that afternoon, to the ring of boys he’d gathered about him in the training yard, "so you need to know how to use them properly." 

He flipped the little practice blades so all the lads, some as young as ten, a few as old as sixteen, could see his crossguards, then dropped the hilts back into his hands. The boys were the standard-bearers chosen by each Northern House for the march south, and though they were supposed to stay out of the fighting, they all needed to know how to defend themselves. He'd gathered them in a corner of the training yard that Jon and his endless teams of men had mostly cleared of rubble, though the Gods knew there was plenty left to throw in the carts parked by the broken walls.

"Their crossguards are small, but they're a built-in shield," he went on, and held them so the boys could look at the position of his thumbs. "Angle the quillons like this and they can save your hands and capture your opponent's blade. From there, you can use your second blade to attack." 

One of the boys, a trader's son from the Mountain Clans, said shyly, "Lord Jon, my da said fightin' with two blades ain't worth the trickiness of usin' your dull hand, makes you a bigger target. Oughter just get behind your one and stay narrow."

Jon nodded, and said, "Your father had a good point. It's a disadvantage if you're not skilled with your second blade, but single-blade fighting works best against someone else with a single blade, and that blade had best be near the size of yours. I changed my mind about second blades when a mutineer beyond the Wall disarmed me in close quarters with his and nearly skewered me."

Eyes wide, the boy said, "How'd you beat 'im, M'Lord?"

"I didn't," Jon said bluntly. "He was striking for my throat when a woman he'd abused stabbed him through the back of the head."

Tormund, who was lazily swinging a blunted axe, grinned and pointed it at the lad. He added, "Lesson for you, boy--always treat women like the goddesses they are, otherwise your _little_ _blade_ will get you killed." The boys tittered and he leered at Ser Brienne, who was standing stone-faced on the side, waiting to demonstrate defense from the sword. She sighed and looked like he'd broken wind in her face.

Jon ignored them and went on with his lesson. "Defense moves only buy you a second or two unless you flow straightaway into your attack. Because you might come up against Lannister infantrymen in chest plates, we'll start by going for the great vessels in the thigh this time around. Catch him here--" he tapped his inner, upper thigh, where the big veins and arteries ran, vulnerable to knifepoint-- "and then angle the tip out as you exit and he'll bleed out on the ground with a collapsed leg while you get away."

He gestured to Tormund, saying, "Come at me slow to show the angle of the axe." 

Tormund nodded and said with waggling brows, "I'm a master with my _ weapon, _ boys, so watch close. The ladies will thank you for it." He thrust his hips, making the boiled leather faulds he'd put on for the lesson swing like a whore's little skirt. 

The boys guffawed, and circled around to watch, while Ser Brienne looked tiredly at the sky. Jon squared up, a blade in each hand, and dropped into defensive position. Tormund came at him with exaggerated slowness, shouting, "I'm trapped in calf's foot jelly, lads, help, I'm stuck!" 

The littler boys giggled, and Jon let the Free man's axe blade get close before he neatly slotted one dirk's crossguard around it. While Tormund mimed freezing in shock for the boys, Jon slipped inside Tormund's guard and thrust his left-side dirk through the gap in his faulds, poking him just where the great vessels lay, then flicked his wrist so a real blade would've severed the muscle as he pulled out.

The boys muttered excitedly among themselves, and when Jon let Tormund go, the red-haired man dropped to his knees with a theatrical yowl. Then he stopped abruptly and said, "That was me bein' a Southerner. A Free man would bite your balls off from here."

Jon almost-smiled at the boys' big eyes, and said, "A Southerner might try it, too, so all the more reason to run for safety the second your opponent's down. Don't engage except to defend yourselves. That's the Queen's orders." He watched to make sure the boys all nodded--though for some it was reluctant--while Tormund got up. Then the red-haired man swung at him again from other angles--overhead, side-armed, and from a left-handed fighter's positions all around. Each time, Jon caught the axe with a quillon and slipped his second blade in low and quick.

When Jon was done, he said, "Take partners and practice."

"And don't stab your partner in the bits," Ser Brienne added dryly.

The boys formed up, and the three adults went from pair to pair, adjusting stances and giving advice as the students clumsily clacked their dull blades together and mimed laming each other. After the pairs had switched sides and were making ready for swordwork, Jon saw a swirl of yellow out of the corner of his eye.

_ Fuck. _

It was the Prince.

From the moment Rhaegal had made the nobleman flinch at the Dothraki wedding, Jon had known this moment would come.

The man was swaggering across the yard toward them in his bright silk coat, wearing a longsword and two daggers, plus what looked like boot knives, from the shape of his calves. He was unaccompanied by the Queen. He was definitely looking for a fight.

"Lord Snow," he called, with a tone so mocking it grated on Jon's bones. "I couldn't help but notice you were teaching close combat." 

The man was different without the Queen's eyes on him. The veneer of charm was thinned, showing something more calculating beneath. Jon knew in his marrow the man was here to show him his place--bastard boy, landless, former suitor to the woman His Highness intended to take for himself. For a moment, Jon felt acutely the sweat-rimed old gambeson he was wearing, which was too tight in the shoulders from all the time he'd spent heaving rubble into carts like a peasant.

Jon rose to what height he had and said, "Aye. Dirks against swords and axes."

The Prince raised an eyebrow at him and smiled as if Jon had made a weak joke, and started pacing around Jon, _ circling _him. In the back of his head, he felt Ghost and Rhaegal tense with him, not liking the feel of Jon as prey. He pushed reassurance at them, especially at his dragon, but he felt Ghost slipping closer. Jon forced himself to turn only his head to keep eyes on the man, to not let the enemy lead him like a dog on a string.

"A fine weapon, the dirk," Martell said to him, talking as if he were a maester lecturing a child. "A subtle blade. If well-used, it can slip in close, take a man by surprise." 

He came around to face Jon and said, almost innocently, "Surely you will also teach them hand-to-hand combat, though." 

Jon nodded. "We will. Later. I'm not having boys bringing fists to a swordfight if they can help it."

_ "Fists?" _ Martell asked smugly, and Jon knew he'd just made the man's day. "Crude tools," he said dismissively. "A knuckle, a _ fingertip. _Those are far more powerful weapons."

"Sounds like horseshit," Tormund said. The boys had been tense as little rabbits in front of a snake, sensing the tension among the adults, but at that they all laughed, and Ser Brienne looked intrigued. 

"I understand that you studied in Essos," she said, ignoring Tormund. "I've heard of barehanded techniques used there to great effect."

The man spun to face to her and smiled assessingly. "In Asshai, yes, and the Golden Empire of Yi-Ti. Places where war is an art form." He looked her frame up and down, as if her black armor were clear as water. "Where knowledge of the human body's pleasure and pain is... sacred."

She blinked and her expression turned a bit squirrelly. Tormund seemed to increase in size, like a cat puffing up at a strange hound. 

"Let's see how sacred you feel when you fight a Free man," he said, and tossed his blunted axe to the ground. "No blades. No armor. My fists against your fingertips." 

The Prince looked almost pityingly up at Tormund, who loomed over him, but said, "A friendly spar, man to man. Of course." Then he winked at Jon. "For the benefit of the _ children." _

"No injuries," Jon warned them both. "This is training. Pull your strikes."

Tormund grunted in annoyed assent and Martell smiled slyly. "No injuries," he agreed.

Out of the corner of one eye, Jon saw the white shape of Ghost appear at the edge of the circle and wait in the shadow of a big cart, but he held his other half back with his mind.

The Prince removed his sword belt and daggers, and hung them over the weapons rack. He turned, and strolled into the ring with Tormund, who'd stripped off the practice faulds and thrown them to a startled older boy from Barrowtown. Before Martell could even take a defensive stance, Tormund barreled straight at him, a bear-like wall of uncoiling muscle. The Prince swayed as if caught off balance, letting the Free man get far too close for sense, and Tormund threw an explosive right cross that would've taken half Martell's teeth out if he'd been planning to land it. The Prince twitched his face to the side, Tormund's fist flew wide, and with a lightning-fast right hand, Martell stabbed a single, pointed finger into the middle of Tormund's mustache. The Free man yelped like a kicked dog and his entire body folded backward. Quick as a weasel, Martell was on him, clamping his now-clawlike right hand on the sides of Tormund's chin, just under his mouth, while he tried to wrestle Tormund toward the earth. Tormund squalled behind his locked teeth at some inexplicable agony, frantically scrabbling to get the Prince's hand off and digging for purchase with his feet. 

_ "Kneel," _ Martell hissed. _ "You are bested." _

Tormund gave a muffled roar and kept struggling. Martell let go with his free left hand and punched its extended knuckles into a spot high on Tormund's chest, just under his shoulder. Tormund's whole body curled around the source of pain, and Martell hooked a foot behind his knee and flattened him. In a flash, he had knees on Tormund's forearms and his pointed boot toes digging into a spot high on each of the Wildling's thighs. The nobleman slipped his vise-like pinch down just under the bigger man's jaw, clamping it shut, and he ground his knuckles back where he'd punched, putting his back into it. Tormund's snarl turned into a closed-mouthed shriek. The whites of the Free man's eyes shone like a terrified horse's as his whole body seemed to seize against the pain. 

Jon shouted, _ "Enough!" _

He'd seen Tormund fight with two arrows in his back, and then put a bolt in the man's belly himself, while Tormund had done nothing but yell. Whatever in the Hells Martell was doing was--

He wasn't stopping. 

Tormund was still making sounds, so his air wasn't cut off, but his face flushed a sudden, shocking purple as he gagged and twitched, and the light in his eyes began to go out.

Jon ran at them from across the training circle and shoved the Prince with all his strength, knocking him off Tormund. The man somehow spun on one knee and was instantly on his feet, graceful as grass bending in the wind.

"I said _ enough," _Jon roared at him, livid. 

Jon dropped to the wet gravel next to Tormund, who was dead-eyed and twitching, though his face was more scarlet than purple now. The boys all gathered closely around them, silent for once. Jon checked Tormund's breathing, which was rasping like a snore, felt to make sure his windpipe hadn't been crushed, and tapped at the bristly cheek. _ "Tormund," _ he said. _ "TORMUND!" _

At his shout, Giantsbane's eyes twitched back and forth, like he was having a fit, still seeing nothing. He rasped out another breath, then he bared his teeth in a rictus and grabbed spasmodically at Jon's forearms. After a moment, his mouth relaxed, and he slurred, "'The fug happ'n?"  
  
His blue eyes drifted, until one stared at Jon's neck and the other toward a boys' muddy breeches behind Jon's head.

Jon leaned in and said lowly, "The Prince choked you."  
  
Jon didn’t even try to explain the way Martell had used pain-strikes on him. Every fighter knew a few of the sensitive spots that would cramp a muscle and cause a jolt of outsized, tingling pain when struck, but even Ser Rodrick had only taught them a handful of big ones, at the shins, solar plexus, temple, chin, and on the stones and upper groin. Dropping an iron-willed man by hitting tiny points with the fingertips…. Jon had never seen the like of it.

Tormund grunted and raised his lolling head, tugging on Jon's arms to try to haul himself up. He abruptly groaned and let go, though, sinking back to the dirt. He blindly lifted one unsteady hand to his chin where he'd been jabbed and pinched. Flinching from his own light touch, he traced along the lines of his mustache, down to his beard, and said, sounding offended, "Southron broke my face." Eyes still twitching, he yanked on Jon again, saying, "Gimme ma fuggin axe..."

Jon just lowered his arms so that Tormund was resting back on the ground, and said, "I'll get you up, but no axe. You're taking a break."

"Ma fuggin' _ axe," _he replied, then shook his head like a bull with a bee in its nose. He puffed a couple of deep breaths, and his eyes stopped going in two directions. He blinked a few more times and then really looked around, seeing that he was surrounded by saucer-eyed little boys. 

"Fuck," he murmured, quietly enough to only reach Jon's ears. "Get me up." Then, louder, he said to the Barrowtown boy, "You, laddie with the skirt, put that on and haul me up. I like strong women." Jon and the flustered teenager pulled the enormous man to standing and he immediately turned to see where the Prince had gone. Jon followed his gaze and saw that Martell was grinning beside Ser Brienne, who was holding herself with wary stillness and not looking at the noble. Tormund bared his teeth again and lunged unsteadily toward them, but staggered badly enough that he nearly toppled over. Jon pulled him back up and decided to treat him like he would a drunk, hauling the big man's right arm over the lad's shoulder, and gesturing for the next tallest boy to support him on the other side.

"Take him to the maester," Jon said to them against Tormund's grunted protests. "Tell him what happened."

The boys started to lurchingly guide him away, but as he passed Jon, Tormund leaned unsteadily toward Jon's ear and muttered, "Kill that goatfucker for me." 

They stumbled away, and Jon stalked to the Prince with a headful of fire. "This is a training session," he snarled in the man's face. "When I say a match is done, it's done."

The Prince looked almost ashamed. Almost. "I apologize, friends," he said more to the small crowd that had gathered than to Jon, holding out his hands, the faintest curve to his lips. "There was no injury. As you saw, a man may recover from a blood-choke in moments. And a pain-strike is simply an..._ invitation _ to experience pain in its purest form, and is not pain is the greatest of all teachers?" He shrugged and grinned. "My opponent, he should've yielded."

"You didn't tell him to yield," Jon said tightly. "You told him to _ kneel. _The Free Folk do not kneel. Not to you, not to anyone, and you dishonored him by calling for it." 

"A slip of the tongue," the Prince said smoothly, his amusement in Jon's fury written on his elegant face. "Perhaps I should find a new opponent. One who is less troubled by _ honor." _

His focus narrowed to a thin, ugly column--the Prince's sneering face, his graceful, snakelike body, and the blur of people and keep behind him. Jon's breath began to tremble in his chest, not from fear but from eagerness. The smell of the animals, the touch of the wind, and every other sense impression sharpened until the world was like a cut gem around him. 

_"Your Highness," _ Jon said with a nod, and backed up into the ring, dropping into a defensive stance as he walked. He was sick of the man's talk, sick of his games, sick of his perfumed facade.

_ Strengths, weaknesses... He's arrogant. Fucking quick. Knows more pain-strikes than I've ever heard of. He's got a long reach but his height will make him easier to shoulder under if I can get inside his guard. Holds his arms low like he's pretending he won't protect his face or neck. Focuses on hand strikes, not knees or elbows, relies on fingertips and knuckles.... _

The crowd took several wary steps back, giving them almost the whole training yard to themselves.

The Prince followed him, strolling hipshot and so arrogant that he didn't even glance around the ring to look for other dangers. 

Jon could feel Ghost somewhere close, close enough to watch and hear them. If something went wrong, Jon would live and the Prince would not.

The Prince took advantage of the crowd's caginess and murmured so likely only Jon could hear, "All say you are no longer Queen Daenerys' paramour. But I see how you look at her. Like a dog hungry for familiar meat." 

While Jon's vision tinged red, Martell's hand whipped out, almost lazily, toward Jon's face and Jon dodged back just in time.

"You'll speak of her with _ respect," _ Jon spat, his fists clenching to strike. "She is honorable. _ I _am honorable." 

_ Strengths, weaknesses... Arrogant, quick, tall so get inside his guard, arms held low, focuses on hand strikes, not knees or elbows, relies on fingertips and knuckles.... _

The Prince paced around to Jon's left, like a bored lynx in spring, and said, "Honor, honor... you talk so much about it, and yet it is the one thing that falls away fastest when true pain comes."

_ Come closer, you fucker. _

Jon stepped back to draw the Prince out, but the Prince didn't move in, and instead slipped nonchalantly off to Jon's left again.

_ Strengths, weaknesses... Arrogant, quick, tall, arms held low, focuses on hand strikes, relies on-- _

Jon saw the Prince's posture coil, and he was barely ready when the man's long, lean leg shot out toward Jon's left knee. He darted inside the Prince's guard, taking a glancing blow at the bottom of his thigh muscle that ached as he hammered a combination of quick blows toward the man's jaw and throat that somehow glanced uselessly off flashing forearms and palms. As Jon tried to get under his defenses by putting a fist into Martell's ribs, the Prince took advantage of his unguarded head and rammed his knuckles just under Jon's left ear, sending pain exploding through his skull. 

Jon reeled back, barely able to keep his eyes open. The pain was astounding. The Prince allowed him to retreat for a moment, and simply smiled at him as he gathered himself again. 

_ Strengths, weaknesses... Arrogant, quick, tall, arms held low, focuses on hand strikes-- _

Jon breathed through the rapidly fading pain and they paced in a slow circle, like old men at a country dance, eyes locked, reversing direction at the subtlest changes in the other's body language. As they spun closer and closer in, Jon looked for openings. The Prince started coiling again, and before he could strike, Jon was throwing a hard punch at his cheekbone. Martell got a hand up faster than Jon could even see, blocked him by punching Jon's fist from the side, and with the other hand jabbed the belly of Jon's extended bicep with pointed fingers. Searing pain screamed through Jon's arm, which contracted almost to his shoulder, as if he'd slammed his elbow into the edge of a table. Jon tried to get the cramped arm back in position, but the Prince's knee slammed his ribs on the other side. Jon struck uselessly with his left just past the Prince's right ear, and the noble chopped the blade of his hand into the top of Jon's striking bicep to give another burst of racking pain. As that arm twitched violently, uselessly, the Prince threw a flurry of stabbing blows to Jon's liver, sharp enough to make Jon bite back a scream. 

Jon scrambled back to just get a bloody breath, and the Prince let him escape. In a few precious seconds, his arms stopped trembling, but his biceps felt weak as rotten wood.

_ Strengths, weaknesses… Arrogant, quick, tall-- _

The Prince lashed out with another kick to the bottom of the thigh, and Jon couldn't help but release a shout as his whole body contracted around the blast of pain that shot up his body from the point of impact. The Prince instantly threw a second kick to his ribs that slammed Jon to the ground on his side, his hauberk sliding across the gravel and his cheek grinding into the mud. Jon scrambled to get up but his left arm collapsed under him. He pushed himself up again, using just his right side, and made it to standing.

"You should give up," Martell chided, slowly following him. Stalking him. "Pain-strikes make the body fold like parchment to protect itself. You may think you have courage, but the body will always pull away from pain, my friend. It fears death, even if the mind doesn't." 

Dany's face flashed through Jon's mind, and his vow to himself that he'd learn to live as if he weren't afraid of death, as if he were still as strong as her love had made him. 

Jon let the Prince stalk closer, closer, and then bolted straight at him. He feinted for Martell's face, as if he were stupid enough to repeat Tormund's mistake, but it was the precious hands he struck for. As Jon's right shot high, the Prince put both hands up to guard his face, and Jon went for the left one, snatching for a wrist he could sweep behind the man's back. He got it in a brutal grip and slipped straight into a position to dislocate the shoulder, but the movement was too easy, there was no resistance at all. The wrist pulled _ him _ down instead, like a boulder tugging him down through water, as the Prince turned, and then something knocked his weighted foot out from under him. Panic, falling, and he crashed into the gravel with shocking force, head hitting the ground hard enough to see stars and his spine shoving all the air from his lungs with a wheeze. _ This _he knew--airless panic. The Walker that had thrown him down a ten-foot drop at Hardhome had taught him how little he needed air when the thing he'd trade it for was his life. He instantly rolled away and to his feet, suffocating while his lungs refused to refill. 

In the seconds it took him to stand, his lungs reinflated with a hoarse gasp, and then his starry vision was filled with the black blur of a bootsole somehow coming at his face. It grazed his temple, and his vision was completely gone for a moment as he spun through space. He kept his feet under him, barely locking his legs to stagger away. He escaped perhaps a dozen feet, and when his eyes sharpened again Martell was smiling pleasantly at him and strolling toward him._ Making a show of it. _

"I've met so many men like you," the Prince said, almost sadly. Almost. Then Martell was on him before he could clear his head, throwing a kick to his solar plexus that emptied Jon's lungs again and folded him in half. "You think a fight can be won with brutality and instinct." 

The Prince took hold of his hair, right at the base of the skull, where it hurt the most. 

_Weakness... He loves to cause pain._

Jon went to one knee, as if he were collapsing, and the Prince stepped behind him, putting his hands almost tenderly around Jon's neck before he clamped brutally down. He wasn't choking Jon, though--he was digging his iron fingers into the spot below the ears that he'd punched before, the place of agony. Pain blasted through Jon's senses, whiting everything else out. Everything but the soft memory of Dany, somewhere inside him. Jon didn't need air, or light or even his thoughts. He let the tormented contraction of his muscles winch him tight as a bowstring, and then he loosed. He exploded to standing, straight up, as if he were throwing a huge building stone up from the ground, and smashed the back of his head against the Prince's chin. Time slowed as more stunning pain starred out from the point of impact, and Jon thrust his elbow straight back, using all the power in his triceps and workman's back, and caught Martell right in the solar plexus. He felt the wind of Martell falling behind him, and as Jon pivoted to face him he channeled the force in his legs and torso through his other elbow, smashing the Prince on the side of the face. The Prince staggered back, eyes half-closed, and choked as he spit out a molar and bloody drool. Martell stared dazedly up at him with hateful eyes.

"I've met men like you, too," Jon panted, swaying a little on his feet as well, head blurry with pain. "You've never fought for anything more important than your own life." 

The Prince grinned through bloody teeth, and said, "Not everyone can die as often as you," as he rushed Jon.

He wasn't as nearly as graceful anymore. Jon backed up, almost to the cart where Ghost was. The man would try for a killshot, or ruin to his face, revenge for messing up that pretty smile. Martell stabbed vicious fingers at his eye, and Jon simply ducked under his arm and caught the man by his throat. The hands he used to hold Rhaegal's spikes for hours clamped down, and Jon lifted him straight in the air. Before the Prince could knee him in the guts or kick him in the stones, Jon slammed him against the side of the cart, and the Prince wheezed as the breath was knocked out of him. He slid to the ground with his eyes bulging, struggling for air. 

Jon stood over him, making sure the noble actually started breathing again, though Jon wasn't sure the world wouldn't be better if he didn't. When the Prince sucked in a proper lungful, Jon said, "When I go south, I won't be fighting for my life. I'll be fighting for the Queen's. Every second I fight until she's on her throne, I'm fighting for her. Next time you think to come for me, ask yourself what I won't do for her."

Martell glared and started to say something else, but stopped short. His eyes widened and he swallowed visibly. "Your Grace," he said. 

Jon turned, and behind them, standing beside Ghost in the shadow of the back of the cart, was Dany. Her white coat blended into Ghost's fur, and the direwolf was so big that she was nearly hidden at his side. There was no telling how long she had been there, nor what she had heard. She was looking at the Prince with hard disdainful eyes, and then glanced away from the noble so dismissively that Jon could feel the cut. Then she looked at Jon with some terrible, unspoken emotion scarcely hidden under her regal mien. 

She clutched her fingers into his direwolf's fur and said, "Thank you both for the most instructive lesson. I trust that your... _ demonstration _ for the children is finished?" 

Jon and the Prince nodded, silenced by her calm. She looked at him for a long moment, seeming at a loss for words, then seemed to resign herself to something and simply inclined her head in respectful acknowledgement. She turned toward the King's Tower, pulling Ghost with her. She went perhaps twenty feet and then stopped. Jon glanced at what she was looking at. Tyrell and Sansa were standing together near the bottom of her stairs, talking. Sansa was holding another book under her arm, and was tucking her bright hair back behind one ear. Lord Tyrell spotted Her Grace coming and raised a hand in happy greeting. Sansa glanced at the Queen, said something to Tyrell, turned in a hurried swirl of skirts, and left. The Queen's shoulders drooped, she said something to Ghost, who obediently sat, and she walked on toward Tyrell, alone.


	17. Preparing for War

"And if Cersei sends her forces here, what of it?" asked Lord Lemonwood, one of Martell’s men, as he dismissively gestured over the spread-out Northern tokens on the war map.    
  
The man’s arrogance was rivalled only by his liege lord’s, and Jon had to grit his teeth to keep from cutting him off. They were marching south in less than two weeks, but while the Queen's commanders had planned much of the assault on King's Landing, they were stuck in internal battles over how to defend their existing strongholds from retaliating forces. And ever since Jon’s fight with the Prince, the Dornishmen’s subordinates had seemed to assert themselves all the more in the business of the North.

The Dornish lord went on, "Surely Lord Brandon can see them coming. The North is vast. You should use the technique Dorne exercised against Aegon the Conquerer. Simply evacuate your holdfasts and stores when Lord Brandon sees the occupiers nearing, let them have a place for a few weeks until they reduce their forces to a small guard as they inevitably must, then slaughter the troops and return. It worked for my people for a hundred years, against not just armies, but Balerion the Black Dread. The North must be filled with holdfasts and hidden places that can keep your hardy people for short periods while they wait out invaders."

Bran only looked at the man silently, then gazed incuriously into the distance, but Sansa clenched her fists and insisted with restrained force, "We will not evacuate tens of thousands of smallholders, including children and the sick, in the uncertain weather of early winter. Cersei won't want just the keeps--she'll order her men to raze every farm to the ground, salt our fields, and poison our wells. We must hold the Neck with an immovable force."

Lord Tyrell didn't hesitate. "Lady Sansa is correct," he said firmly. "Fleeing with advance warning does no good against those who would create permanent damage to the land. Our Queen is perfectly aware that Dorne is a desert riddled with sandstone caves, and the North is not."

Jon shifted his weight in his boots, trying to get his feet comfortable after the near-hour of standing and thinking grim thoughts. Daenerys was off doing something with the bloody Prince, and he’d spent most of the meeting brooding on what she’d be doing alone with him, after what she’d learned of the man during their fight. The man had shown his calamitous nature to her and Jon, both, and what use she had for Martell beyond his armies, at this point, was beyond Jon.    
  
In a show of her new favor for Tyrell, on the other hand, she had assigned the Lord of Highgarden to stand as her representative in this meeting. Though the noble was competently upholding the task of speaking for her in the absence of a Hand, these meetings never went well when she wasn't here. Northron nobles she'd charmed in various ways over the previous weeks quickly became recalcitrant, and lately they'd been muttering about the favor she obviously showed for her "savages and eunuchs" over the Houses of the North. A few seemed to forget entirely that they'd ever promised to march south, or that their once-king had bent the knee to a particularly deadly queen.

Lord Ryswell, a brother of the harridan Lady Dustin, was one of them, saying, "Yes,  _ Lady Sansa  _ is correct. My men, at the very least, should remain in the North. Why should we leave our lands when Screamers armed with dragonbone weapons are available to do the Dragon Queen's business for--"

The crowd around the table started shouting their assents and denials so loudly that the man was drowned out.   
  
Jon slammed one of the big wooden direwolf mapmarkers on the table and shouted, "ENOUGH! Every House of the North will march in support of the Queen. That is  _ final." _

To Jon's great surprise, his sister interjected into the startled silence,  _ "My Lords,  _ my brother, your liege-lord, pledged that we would march south, so we must." She pointed at a carved lizard-lion on the war map. "Our bannerman, Howland Reed, is the only lord who can mount a real defense in the Neck. He's the only one who knows his swamplands well enough to maneuver in them, and his archers and ambush fighters should be able to destroy anyone who tries to get through."

Ryswell stared at her as if she were an especially slow child. "The Reed forces were already small, and they're much depleted now. Those little frog-eaters can't possibly hold even their own lands against a significant attack. We can't rely on them to protect the North--we can rely only on ourselves. Surely you know that better than anyone."

"Aye," said Lord Ashwood. "We've protected the North for thousands of years--"

Ser Adrian grunted, "Aside from when Queen Daenerys does it for you."

Half the room turned on the knight, snarling like curs.

Lord Willas raised his voice above the crowd, saying, "Lady Sansa's plan is good--the swamps of the Neck are a defense of their own that will hold off most invaders. The proposal would be improved if the Kingsroad south of the Neck were heavily defended as well, to blockade and scatter incoming forces. May I suggest several companies of the Vale's light cavalry for this purpose?"

"How many?" demanded Grey Worm. "We agreed light cavalry would lead offense against Stormlands." 

"Do you think we could spare three?" Tyrell asked. 

Grey Worm furrowed his always intense brow, while the room held its breath. "Three only," he intoned, then added, "And you, Lord Tallhart. Your men train with us every morning. Two centuries of your infantry for making shields-and-spears behind them. Cavalry run to enemy. Enemy can run around them. Nobody can run through shield walls you learned."   
  
“I should be there as well,” Bran said softly. He was staring toward the window, hardly seeming to know he was in the war room at all. “Lord Reed is a greenseer. We both see glimpses of the future, but dimly. If we’re together, we can help each other interpret what we see, and mount a better defense.” He pointed with a thin finger at the map, where the land was almost shattered apart at the Neck, and added, “And I can help them find ancient channels that can be flooded for defense, ones the Children of the Forest made but even the Reeds have forgotten.”

“You cannot possibly go--” Sansa started, but Bran stopped her by meeting her eyes and  _ smiling  _ at her.

“I’m not broken, you know,” he said. “It will be all right.”

He'd have agreed if only to keep Bran smiling for the first time since his return, but anything that would shorten the flight of ravens from Bran's position to the Southern front would be a boon. Jon said, “You can go. It will put you closer to the action in the South, anyway, and we’ll need all the help you can give us.”

Sansa cut a glare at him but didn't argue. She said, “Then he must use the knights of the Vale and Lord Tallhart’s men for an escort, at the least.”

Bran’s gaze dulled again as he seemed to look within, and said dreamily, “We'll have to leave tomorrow if we're going to be there in time. A fight is coming. I've seen it." He blinked and looked back up at Lord Tallhart and Yohn Royce. He said to them, "Can you do it?”

Lord Tallhart worked his jaw and gazed at the ceiling a moment as he thought it over, then said reluctantly, “Aye, we can manage it. We’re provisioned, and the men can march if I order it. ‘Camp followers might bellyache, but they’ll make do.” He looked at Lord Royce, who nodded as well, and said, "The knights are made of stern stuff, but they won't disagree with an order to head toward warmer climes."

"Are we done here for the day?" Jon asked. There was no disagreement. "Then we come back tomorrow, at the same time, to discuss shore and river defenses." 

"My Lord," Lord Manderly asked, "Will Her Grace be joining us? We cannot discuss coastal tactics without knowing whether the dragons will be available to rejoin us from Dragonstone in an emergency."

"I don't know," Jon said shortly. At Manderly's consternation, he said, "I will ask her to."

He made his way out of the hall behind the rest of the crowd, now able to pay attention to the nagging shoves of feeling he'd been getting from Rhaegal since halfway through the meeting. The dragon wasn't frightened or hurt, but he was very irritated about something and it had put Jon in a foul mood. Sansa came up alongside him, and Arya silently dropped in on his other side. 

Sansa said, "The lords are getting rebellious again. We're supposed to leave in a week and some of them will desert if the Queen doesn't get them in hand."

As far as he knew, Arya hadn't even been in that meeting, but she said, "They're our bannermen. You and Jon need to get them in hand."

"Stop criticizing  _ me,"  _ Sansa retorted. "I didn't say a word against her."

"No, but you didn't exactly--" Arya started, but Jon had to break in. 

"Would you two please stop arguing for five bloody minutes? I've got an aching head. The dragons are upset about something and it's driving me mad." 

Sansa huffed in frustration as they passed under an open lintel and into the courtyard, but kept her peace. In the distance, he could hear Rhaegal make an angry little shriek, then Drogon snarled.

Arya said, "Let's go see them. Is one of them sick?"

He said, "That's where I'm going, and no, dragons don't get sick. Not them or their blood."

His littlest sister cocked her head at him. "What do you mean, their blood?" 

"True Targaryens don't get sick," he said, heading toward the gates that led to the dragon's nest. “Not ones who ride dragons.”

Sansa said, "You got sick. You had the pox when you were a baby. Old Nan said so."

"I'm half Stark," he said. "I wasn't marked when most babies who had it died. Just like I heal fast from burns, but Danaerys doesn't burn at all."

Sansa said skeptically, "So you're telling me that she can't get a fever, or a plague?"

They passed through the Dothraki camp, ignored for once by its inhabitants, and he said, "No, she can't. That's why she tends sick soldiers for a bit most days. Contagion doesn't matter to her."

Arya said, "It makes sense. I saw her scrub her hands in a cauldron of boiling water after she'd been seeing men who had the flux. She told me she didn't want to carry the sickness to anyone else. She wasn't worried about herself."

_ "Gods," _ Sansa said, in a tone that  _ might  _ have held a bit of admiration. 

Arya asked, "Wait--does she get sick if she eats bad meat?"

"I don't bloody know!" he said. "Ask her yourself."

Arya said thoughtfully, "Tyrion said she nicked from pig troughs when she was a fugitive in Essos. Don't you think she should've gotten sick from that?"

"Yes, probably, but I don't bloody want to talk about what makes Her Grace vomit," Jon snapped. They came over a rise and Jon could see the dragons now, stamping restlessly, the great slopes of their backs facing him.

"What about poison?" Sansa asked, sounding far too casual. "Can she be poisoned?" 

Jon whirled on her. "Leave," he said shortly. "Go back to the castle."

"I'm not  _ planning--" _ she said, her mouth in a defensive little moue.

_ "Now," _ he said. 

She grimaced at him as if he were the most tiresome brother in the world, but with no real ire, and turned back.

Arya was looking at Jon with another of her unreadable expressions. "If the Queen can't get sick from spoiled food, then--"

She was interrupted by a real roar from Drogon and a blast of fire toward the sky. 

"I told you to step back!" he heard Dany yell, and he took off at a sprint toward the dragons, Arya at his heels.

As he came around Drogon's side, he saw both dragons screeching and shaking their heads at the sight of Dany shielding Prince  _ fucking  _ Quentyn with her body. The Dornishman was on the ground at the end of what looked to be a skid mark the length of three men and was covered from head to foot with dirty snow. 

He was holding his hands up defensively, saying, "I meant no harm--" 

She snarled,  _ "You will obey me in this place!  _ You could've been killed."

Rhaegal hissed at the man like a furious cat and Drogon snapped his swordlike teeth above his mother's head.

The Prince, wiping off his face and hair, spotted Jon and Arya. His expression hardened and he said, "We will try again later. They must become used to me."

Dany's back still to them, she said grimly, "I think they've given you their answer. Go back to the castle. I'm going to calm them."

She turned to watch him go and spotted Jon and his sister standing silently in the snow.

"What did he do?" Jon asked dangerously. "Why was he here?"

Rhaegal immediately circled around his brother toward Jon, but Drogon hissed at both Jon and Arya. Dany ignored Jon and said something soothing in High Valyrian to her son. Drogon growled at her with quivering lips drawn over his teeth, his tone rising and then falling like a distant storm. She kept talking, her hands out, and he lowered his head to her, still muttering. She put out her arms and placed both hands on his face, but he reared back from her and spread his wings. When they reached their full, sky-blotting width, Jon saw a number of still-red, healing injuries on the dragon's belly and shoulders, and the dragon gave a pained-sounding cough as the healing flesh was pulled taut. He shut his wings again with a jerk that blasted Jon's hair back, and thudded back to earth, his enormous claws gouging into the soil barely a foot from Dany's boots. 

She nodded sadly at her son and spoke again, and the dragon gave a gentler cry and placed his enormous muzzle into his mother's arms. She embraced him and talked for a while as the dragon's tail twitched, and then he pulled back and sank down, wrapping his wings over his back and pulling his tail around his face.

Rhaegal came toward Jon again, then stopped. He growled at Arya and looked pleadingly at Jon. 

_ No. Not-Jon no. Not-Mother, not-Jon, NO. _

He turned to Arya. "Sorry," he said. "He doesn't want to be around other people right now."

She nodded comprehendingly and said, "I'll see you later," before heading back toward home. Rhaegal's relief at her leaving was palpable, and he thrust his head at Jon.

At his touch, Jon was flooded with a blade-like anger, tinged with anxiety and accompanied by memories of Quentyn Martell attempting to touch both him and Drogon. The man's swarthy hand beside their mother's white one as she whispered soothingly to them that he was no threat, the man stinking of wrongness, coming _too close, too close, repulsive, _Dany pulling back and speaking sharply to the man as Rhaegal's fires preemptively heated in his belly, the man _grabbing_ and Drogon's_ RAGE._ Both of the dragons had already disliked the man, whom Mother had presented to them too many times already, but he was _not-Mother, not-Jon, not-dragon, _and they would not have him.

Jon looked at Daenerys, who was standing silently in the snow on the other side of Rhaegal's head. He didn't know what to say.  _ He’s evil, he wants to steal them, he wants to steal  _ you, _ are you trying to replace me? _

He settled on, "They don't like him."

She snorted. "I'm aware." Then she looked down at her hands, which were folded in front of her belly in that pose she took when she was trying to control a situation, and said, "But he has enough of our blood to commune with them if one or both of us were killed."

_ Our blood, _ Jon thought. He realized with distaste that the man was his distant relation, not a thought he relished.

He said harshly, feeling childish even as he said it, "If I fall, he can't take Rhaegal." 

She glared at him and said,  _ "Rhaegal _ can have whomever  _ he _ chooses. _ Zaldrīzes buzdari iksos daor." _ Then she said resignedly, "But, neither of them will ever accept him."

"Then why risk bringing him out here, more than once?" he demanded. "Drogon looked ready to take his head or torch you both."

She looked at him for a moment, eyes softening with a terrible sadness. She swallowed hard, looking torn about something, something painful, something  _ real _ . She started to speak, then her eyes focused over his shoulder and her expression slammed shut like a door. He glanced back and saw both Arya and Sansa behind him, waiting at a respectful distance. 

She shook her head. "It doesn't matter," she said. "I won't be bringing him back." Then she strode away, back toward the castle, her braid whipping in the cold wind.

He followed her, giving Rhaegal a mental promise he'd return soon. As he chased after her, he helplessly noticed how gorgeous she was from behind, the curve from her tiny waist to her hips somehow even more breathtaking than usual. He put his hand on her shoulder to turn her and said, "What were you going to tell me, Daenerys? I am your ally, if nothing else, and the dragons  _ are _ my business." 

She stopped, her delicate jaw working as she looked up into his eyes. "You  _ are _ my ally," she said haltingly. "And I am grateful for it. My children need to know more people. War is coming. The  _ future _ is coming, whether we want it to or not, whether  _ I  _ want it to or not. Now please drop this.  _ Please."  _

She'd so rarely asked him for anything before--commanded, yes, but not like this. Not in this soft, pleading way. Reluctantly, he nodded.

She turned again toward his sisters and went to them, a subdued Jon following behind.

She nodded at them, all business again. "Arya has informed me that the Northern lords are forgetting their promises again. Lady Sansa, I would like for them and all their troops to assemble in front of Winterfell's gates tomorrow after the noon meal. I wish to speak with them. Would you accompany me to make arrangements, and to discuss my latest shipments?" 

Sansa nodded wordlessly, looking resigned, and the two women set off toward the castle, a pair Jon had rarely thought he'd see together.

Arya and Jon watched them go, standing in the cold until the two women entered the gates. 

"She's trying to make her decision," Arya eventually said. 

"About what?"

"You know what," she said. "Which lord to marry."

"Why would she even consider him?" he demanded, frustrated enough to pull his hair out. "She knows what he is. And it's too soon to cement a political match. She needs them both committed, and either man could die in the war. Why in the Hells is she rushing it?"

She regarded him with that cool, complex look of hers that made him feel so unmoored. "For the same reason that a Queen who can't get ill sicked up her breakfast this morning."

He whipped his head to face her. His heart dropped, then rose almost unbearably. A wave of heat swelled over him, like being dunked headfirst in the Godswood hotsprings. He tried to speak, but his mouth just opened and closed, helplessly. "Are you sure?" he finally croaked.

"That she puked. That her new dresses got tight in the tits. That's she's all rosy and pretty even when she feels like shit. That she barely touches drink anymore. What it means isn't certain." 

"But it's--?" He couldn't even find the words.  _ Real,  _ he thought.  _ It's  _ real.

"It's likely," Arya said. 

Jon shook his head dazedly, a stun ox in breeches. "She said she was cursed. Barren. I told her she wasn't."

"Then either she wasn't, or you have a magic dick."

Those words coming out of his baby sister's mouth did him in. "You go to your room," he ordered, dead serious, and fled toward his own chambers. His way from the camps to the yard to his corridor to his chamber door was a blur of jerkily strung-together thoughts and images.

_ I'm... we... a  _ babe. _ It'll need... a  _ cradle?  _ Won't it? How do I make a cradle? And, and... women knit little socks. And gowns. Can Dany knit? Gilly can, Gilly could do it for her.... And a rattle? Toys, little Dothraki horses... and... and.... _

Jon closed his door, sat on the edge of his bed, and wept.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Regarding whether dragonriders could get ill--yes, some did, because the dragonriders' immunity to illness, which was a combination of very high body temperature and magic, couldn't overcome every illness, especially if the person was weakened in some way.


	18. The Pronouncements

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy New Year, wonderful friends! Thanks, as always, to my beta, anread, for her help, understanding, and big heart. I'm so lucky to have her.

_ I'm to be a father, a _ father _ \-- _

_ Of a bastard babe, I swore I'd never, I've cursed my own child, and I did it to Dany, to our babe-- _

_ "Stop playing with him! He's a dirty bastard!" _

_ "You should never marry, Jon Snow. Your father's shame should end with you." _

_ "You may not have my name, but you have my blood." _

_ A bastard of incest, I've made a monstrous thing, sickening and-- _

_ A sweet boy like Little Sam, like Rickon was, a tiny weight in the arms-- _

_ He'll need swaddling and caps and a cradle and toys, I don't know how you make a cradle but I will learn, I'll make it with my own hands-- _

_ I'll never know my son, my son-- _

_ Or a _ daughter, _ so beautiful and brilliant like Dany, so beautiful and brilliant like Arya, a tiny weight in the arms-- _

_ Dany's not even showing yet. Does he have eyes and ears and a little mouth and fingertips to kiss? _

_ What should we name her? Lyanna or Arya, or, or, Rhaella, or Rhaenys, or Alysanne, ha--Arya would say _ Visenya _ . _

_ Will her name be Snow? or Waters? or Flowers? or Sand? _

_ Tyrell, or Martell, or Targaryen-- _

_ Dany, my Dany, my love will marry one of those noble, trueborn sons of bitches-- _

I_ have the right, I'm _ not _ a bastard, I can claim him, claim them both-- _

_ And they'll stab us in our beds for my abomination, everyone will know what I am, you disgusting aunt-fucker-- _

_ She'll take my son away before he ever knows me-- _

_ I'm going to make Dany a _mother--

_ I'm to be a _ father _ \-- _

_ I can't let them take her away-- _

_ I don't want to be without them, I'll beg her, I'll beg the Gods-- _

_ Please-- _

_ Please. _

* * *

He didn't know if he slept. The gasping, choking sobs that wracked him stopped at some point, and he lay down and closed his sore eyes. The words and images, though, they kept flowing through him--little children so sweet and beloved, and horrible deformities, and dying in the dark, killed by trusted men, and Craster's filthy hands, and Father teaching him a thousand things, so patient, and his endless guilt and shame, and his beloved, his Dany, the mother of his child, her glorious body that was always safe and home, the dragons screaming, her turning from him forever and sailing away, and a lonely boy always rejected, always alone at the back of the room while his family feasted at the high table. When dawn came, the light finally swept the sea of memory and vision away, leaving him with nothing but wonder and grief, deep as a lake you could drown in.

He had to talk to her. He knew that. He had given up every right to her, but somehow she must tell him the truth herself, and talk _ with _ him about what they would do. 

He bathed and dressed and readied himself, ate a little bread and cheese brought by a servant to calm his guts, and thought about having a tankard for courage, but rejected the idea. Lady Catelyn had hated the smell of ale when she was expecting.

When he reached the base of the Queen’s tower, he immediately knew from the number of Dothraki guards at the door that she wasn’t there. He approached the men at Missandei’s door instead, and they glared but allowed him to knock.  
  
The Naathi woman opened the door to him, took in the effects of his sleeplessness and thrashing with slightly widened eyes, but asked calmly, “How may I help you, My Lord?”  
  
“I need to talk with the Queen,” he said. “Where can I find her?”  
  
She replied with her usual calm, “She is attending to her arrivals from Meereen, and will be engaged until this afternoon’s speech to the Northern armies. Shall I request that she make time for you after?”

"The moment she's available", he said reluctantly, and made the arrangements. He called Ghost to him, and went to the training yard to spar with any warrior who would have him.

* * *

  
  


When people started streaming out of the great hall toward the gates, after the lunch hour he’d ignored, he hung up his practice blade, washed up, and followed.

His people made way for him to come to the front of the crowd as he passed among them, nodding at him with the usual troubling variety of degrees of respect. A line of nobles stood at the front, his two sisters and Bran in the middle, plus, strangely enough, Gendry Waters, looking so proud he could barely contain himself. Jon pushed into place beside Arya. She studied his face, but made no comment. 

"D'you know what she's going to say?" he asked her.

"No. You could ask Gendry."

He looked over at, well, his sister's lover. The man grinned at him and said, "What? And ruin the surprise I been working on for a bloody month straight? Not a chance."

Sansa said softly, _ "I _ know. Most of it, anyway." He turned to look at her hard. Her face was white and mournful, and a little ashamed, as if she had lost some contest she'd long banked on winning.

"Are you spying on her again?" he demanded, under his breath, to keep the nobles around them from hearing. 

"No. I spent the day and half the night negotiating with her."

"You--?" he started to say, but then a few of the nobles Dany had won over, and a number of men in the crowd, started cheering. 

Around the castle, from the direction of the Unsullied camps, a strange parade, like from a spring pageant, was making its way forward. The Queen came first, mounted Dothraki style on a beautiful dappled warhorse, wearing something that looked like cavalry armor--breastplate and backplate, pauldrons, gauntlets, cuisses, and greaves, all shiny black as beetle shell, with swept-back striations like dragon wings. A small grey scabbard hung from the side of her saddle, swinging gently as the big horse walked. Tied to the back of her saddle was the lead for Rhakarro's magnificent black stallion _ (his _ stallion, Jon's mind insisted), which had on it a dragonbone bow far too long for her. Behind her rode more than a dozen Dothraki men, all on war horses with similar bows. Behind _ them _ came two wagons full of strange Essosis, mostly middle-aged men with shoulders broad enough to carry tree trunks, followed by two teams, side by side, pulling covered supply wayns. 

"By the Gods," Arya murmured. "She's going to do it."

The crowd was whispering fiercely, making all kinds of exclamations about what gifts the lords might be about to receive. 

"Going to do what?" Jon asked her, just as quietly. 

"Win them all over," she said. 

A lump formed in his throat as Dany, beautiful Dany, armed for a war he _ must _ stop her from fighting in, dismounted her horse, battle bells chiming in her complexly braided hair. She looked like a dragonrider of old, like a warrior goddess, like his heart. She stood silently before the crowd, letting them admire her in the bright afternoon sun.

Then she called out in her ringing voice, "You say that the North remembers..." 

As the sound carried across the audience, even its hardest faces, like Lady Coldfield's, turned fully to her and squinted in the sunlight.

"Then, let it be known that a Targaryen also remembers," Dany declaimed. "We stand here today, living and together, for one reason: because one army, made of many peoples, fought united on this plain against the greatest threat our world has ever known. As one army, smallfolk and nobles, Westerosi and Essosi, dragonriders and footsoldiers, we faced the Night King and his army, and we saved the world. We did not all come as friends, but we stood together as allies, and each soul played their part." 

Jon startled, recognizing some of his words from the great funeral, but better said. He saw people all around him make small, sometimes tentative nods of agreement, and she went on. 

"You say that the North remembers. So I ask you to make a pledge to me. Will the people of the North tell the tales of what we have done here? Tell the tales, so that our sons and daughters for endless generations, in every kingdom on earth, will remember?"

There was a firm, "Aye!" throughout the crowd, and a good many fists in common soldiers' gloves raised in the air.

"I ask you this: will you pledge to tell the tale of Arya Stark, the Light of the Dawn, the Slayer of Night King and Hero of the World?"

While the crowd shouted, _ "Aye!" _ and _ "Arya Stark!" _with far more enthusiasm, Jon looked at Arya, whose brow was furrowed in surprise, and who looked a little squirmy at all the attention. 

The Queen held up her hand for silence. "Then we must remember that Arya Stark gained her warrior's skill while living as an exile after her father, Lord Eddard, was unjustly executed by Cersei Lannister's son, while the woman stood behind him as Dowager Queen."

Boos and hisses rolled through the crowd. Dany waited until they played themselves out before going on. "The Lannisters stole much from the North that can never be returned--Lord Eddard, Lady Catelyn, King Robb and his wife and heir, your men murdered during the Red Wedding, Rickon Stark, and even Ice, House Stark's ancient greatsword that was forged in Valyria, the land of my family."

"I cannot return to you the murdered. Even Ice is no more, melted down into two blades, one for the evil King Joffrey, one for his father, Jaime Lannister. The first of those two weapons already serves the North again. It is wielded as Oathkeeper by Ser Brienne of Tarth, the sworn sword of Sansa, Lady of Winterfell, and Arya Stark. And now, the rest is returned home. Jaime Lannister is my prisoner, and he has yielded the sword once named 'Widow's Wail' to me in exchange for his life." 

The crowd cheered heartily as she turned to her horse and removed the scabbard hanging there. "Arya Stark, Light of the Dawn, come forth!"

Arya quietly walked to the Queen, eyebrows up, but not looking back or to either side. The Queen said, "I know that no sword will ever replace your Needle, but should you ever wish to wield another, this one is yours. It is reforged from the Valyrian steel of Ice into a water dancer's blade." She drew the sword from its scabbard, revealing a slender, gently curved saber that shimmered with a familiar darkness in the sun. She flipped it carefully across her left arm, revealing a dragonbone handle, its pommel carved into a wolf's head almost identical to Longclaw's.

Jon's throat tightened as Arya unhesitatingly took the blade and examined it. She looked into the Queen's eyes, and then, to his shock, his sister knelt at Dany's feet with the sword held out before her. Dany flushed, her eyes filled, and she gently reached out and retook the weapon. This time it was Arya's turn to look shocked, and Sansa grabbed Jon's arm with a little gasp. He looked at his redheaded sister, and her face was tense with surprise. 

Dany called out, "Then in the name of the Warrior and the Old Gods, I charge you to be brave. In the name of the Father and your people, I charge you to be just. In the name of the Mother and your land, I charge you to defend the innocent. For your fealty, I name you Ser Arya of House Stark, Light of the Dawn, Hero of the World. Arise, Ser Arya, as a knight of the Seven Kingdoms."

Arya, endlessly graceful Arya, smoothly rose as all the North roared as loud as the sea, cheering and shouting her name. She bowed to the Queen, who slipped the sword back into its scabbard and handed it to her. She calmly received it, and not looking to the back or the sides, returned to Jon and Sansa. Though it wasn't proper or solemn or fitting the occasion at all, he swept his little sister into his embrace and kissed her on the forehead.

"Happy?" he asked her. She nodded firmly and bumped his forehead with hers. He let her go, and she stood next to Gendry, who immediately whispered, "You like the sword I made you?"

She smiled slightly, slipped the scabbard into her swordbelt, put her free arm around the smith and rested her head wordlessly on his shoulder, her other hand on the pommel of her new sword.

The Queen raised her hand again._ "All _ the people of the North," she said, "made great sacrifices for our kingdom. The Battle for the Dawn was waged on not just the land we stand upon, but in keeps and on farms and markets and villages from here to Beyond the Wall. Before that, the North paid a great price for the treachery of the Lannisters and her henchmen, in the War of the Five Kings and the Battle of the Bastards. Thousands of fields lay fallow, thousands of farms were burned, and thousands of farmers died to hold the North. You have agreed to march with me, to end Lannister tyranny forever, but as the North remembers its losses, so do I. I ask you this: will you pledge to tell the tale of ordinary Northmen and women who sacrificed their lives and livelihoods in the war for freedom?"

The crowd shouted, _ "AYE!" _

She continued, "Then, Jon Snow, Warden of the North, come forth."

Jon went toward her, feeling as if he were walking through water. The unspeakable strangeness of knowing that she was carrying their child made it impossible to feel at ease, or happy, though he knew she was sure to offer something of importance to him. 

He stood awkwardly beside her, and she gestured to the first line of wayns behind her. "For six years before I returned to save our lands, I prepared for you in the cities of the East. Now, the people of the Bay of Dragons thrive under my rule. Six hundred thousand freed slaves and more than a million other free citizens work their own fields and sell their own goods, and all pay me fair tribute to be used as needed amongst my kingdoms. Lord Snow, Warden of the North, no Northerner will go hungry this winter. From now until the break of Spring, I pledge to send a shipment of food from the Bay of Dragons each month, so that every Northerner, no matter their station, will know freedom from hunger." 

_ Holy Gods. Gods of the trees, Gods of his fathers. _

The North had _ never _had a winter without starvation. 

As the crowd roared and women wept behind him, his throat closed and he fought back his own tears. It was an enormous, unimaginable gift. 

He drew Longclaw, planted it before her, and dropped to one knee. 

She bowed her head to him and said, "For your renewed fealty to me, I name you Jon Stark, legitimate son of House Stark, Warden of the North and Lord of Dragonrider Keep, formerly known as the Dreadfort. Rise."

His breath stopped in his chest. He looked up at her, eyes saucered. 

His Dany looked at him and said very quietly, "Is that all right?"

He nodded. "Thank you, Dany," he said, just as quietly. At her name, she closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and regally gestured him up. 

He managed to hold himself together as he went back to his place, where a sister stood on each side of him and took his hands. The magnitude of the gift of food was simply astonishing. He knew Sansa must've had a hand in it, but the sacrifice of Dany’s own resources was beyond any care that any Southron had ever shown for his people. The legitimization, the keep, those were too life-changing for him to think of right now, but he knew that in just a few words she had shifted the course of his life forever. His mind reeled, even more.

And there were more gifts. The crowd was called on to pledge to remember the destruction of Winterfell, and Sansa, as Lady of Winterfell, was called up to receive the services of the fifty burly, middle-aged men in leather aprons from the wagons. They were master stonemasons who had arrived in the night from Meereen. Dany would pay their wages for the duration of their employment in rebuilding the keep and the winter town to Sansa's satisfaction. After a very tense moment of unblinking hesitation, Sansa knelt before the queen, and as a reward, Dany pledged to pay for them to stay on and obliterate all traces of House Bolton from Dragonrider Keep and its vassal Houses as well. Sansa swallowed hard and looked into Dany's eyes. In a tone that would carry to every noble, she said, "Thank you, My Queen."

The audience pledged to remember the sacrifices of the Three-Eyed Raven, as well as his companions Jojen Reed, Meera Reed, Hodor, and Summer. At that, Dany walked to Bran, accepted his spoken fealty, and gifted him the services of a personal scribe who would record any histories he wished to share and send his ravens out when any risk to the realm arose. She offered the services of a burly personal attendant and healer, as well, one who had previously cared for the paralyzed son of a Wise Master, plus a stonemason from the same household whose only job would be to direct his fellows in making Winterfell easier for Bran to maneuver.

The lords of the northern Houses, as a group, came next. When the crowd pledged to tell the tales of the people they had lost in the previous wars, and for their contributions in the battle for the dawn, she gifted each House a Dothraki warhorse, either a broodmare or a stud, with a priceless dragonbone bow on the saddle. Each noble knelt, though there was some terse verbal exchange between the Queen and Lady Coldfield that Jon couldn't quite hear. Then, there were only two war horses left, the beautiful Dothraki dapple she'd ridden in, and Rhakkaro's black.

The rumbling of the crowd became louder and louder as the commoners discussed the nobles' gifts, but instead of making a final statement and stepping away, triumphant at the fact that every commander had fully committed their forces, she said, "Now, I speak to every remaining Northern man, woman, boy, and girl who held a blade against the army of death and lived. You say that the North remembers. I ask you this: will you pledge to tell the tale of Viserion the Sacrifice, the dragon who gave his life to save the King in the North, was enslaved by Death, and then was freed again?"

The crowd, who likely wouldn't have been happy with telling about the dragon that dropped the Wall, seemed to suddenly notice the second line of wayns behind the Queen. They called out their affirmative, sounding greedy as much as anything.  
  
"Then you will hold his bones in your hands," she cried. The crowd of common soldiers suddenly looked, to Jon's eye's, as fierce as the Dothraki had looked when she was passing out arakhs. 

Even a small token of dragonbone, if sold, would fetch months' worth of wages, especially in the South. "Will you pledge to tell the tale of my Horselords, who crossed a sea for you, and who broke the waves of the Army of the Dead?" 

They screamed, "AYE!" 

"Then you will hold their steel in your hands! Do you pledge to tell the tale of the Unsullied, once-slaves who came to your aid of their own free will, far from their homelands?"

"AYE!"

"Then you will hold _ their _ steel in your hands! And do you pledge to fight for me, as my armies fought for you, to take our realm back from Cersei Lannister and restore the Seven Kingdoms to justice and glory?"

The fighters roared "AYE!"

She raised her fist in the air and shouted, "Then you are my blood, and my fire is yours!"

A handful of men in the front knelt, and then in a wave more and more went down, as if a forest were being felled by a hurricane. Soon, every common soldier was on his or her knee before the Queen, as were most of the castlefolk. 

She looked over them, cold northern wind whipping her bright hair back, the long, empty plains toward the south splayed behind her, the thin sun polishing her black armor and flushed face. She unsheathed from her waist a long, shining dagger with a dragonbone handle.

"For your fealty, I name you Heroes of the Dawn, now and always. I give to you a dagger of steel reforged from the arakhs of my fallen Dothraki and the spears of my fallen Unsullied, the finest castle-forged steel in all the world. The handle is bone of Viserion the Sacrifice. Always remember us and we will always remember you! Rise!"

The commoners leapt to their feet as Dothraki and Unsullied whipped the canvas off the wayns and began unloading baskets of the sheathed daggers, which they brought to the cheering crowd. The Essosis’ fierce looks probably kept the fighters from trying to grab more than one, and the Queen stood benevolently watching them and accepting their shouted thanks. 

Then, to Jon's distress, Her Grace nodded to the Dothrakaan who had been minding her own horse and the black stallion, and he untied the black from her dapple's saddle. She turned to where Prince Quentyn and Lord Willas were standing together. 

Arya glanced at him, concerned, and he knew. Dany was going to announce who she was marrying.

Jon's ears started roaring again, and he needed to stop this somehow, needed to make her wait, make her talk to him, make her tell him about the babe, _ anything, _ and he was taking a half-blind step forward when the Queen frowned at something on the side of the crowd. Maester Wolkan had shoved his way through the onlookers and was running toward her, robes fluttering and bald head bobbing. He paused for a breath to collect Lord Manderly and his two sons, Lords Wylis and Wendel, from the line of nobles, and then all four of the fat men ran, panting, to the Queen.

Bending over to catch his breath, the maester handed her a raven scroll and rapidly spoke to her and the lords. Daenerys's face reddened, the cords of her slim neck went taut, and her nostrils flared. 

What in the Seven Hells was happening in White Harbor?

She barked a few orders Jon couldn't hear over the crowd, and the maester trotted over to Gendry. Still out of breath, he gasped to the smith, "Fetch the Queen's helm and meet her at the dragons' nest." 

_ Fuck. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: Actually talking to each other.


	19. The Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: Fear/risk of miscarriage, mention of past stillbirth and miscarriage, significant character death. (NOT BOATBABY! BOATBABY IS FINE!) Scroll down to see end-notes about where to skip this material. See the bottom of this note for how to skip those sections, and the end-notes for the basics of what happened.
> 
> Thanks for waiting so long for this, friends. I did a long, very thoughtful rewrite of this chapter, and at the same time, I've discovered a possibly longterm solution to my insomnia, which means that instead of writing half the night, I'm writing only during the day around other projects and Life Things. Anread, my amazing beta and partner in this fic, deserves the credit for this chapter being massively improved, and you should thank her for her awesomeness. She brings joy to me every day.
> 
> The next chapter will come out much sooner. Usually, when I make a significant change in characterization and narrative, literally every chapter after needs a hard rewrite, but that won't be the case for chapters 20-22, I think.
> 
> I want to thank every single person who has commented supportively so far, AND I'm turning off anonymous commenting. I'll miss some of your truly kind, thoughtful voices--they genuinely make my life--but since this fic has so many super-fans (i.e., hate-readers), I've decided to improve my mental health and cut out some of the worst of the noise.
> 
> To skip the first instance of mention of past stillbirth and miscarriage, stop reading at "A sneering Essosi noblewoman." Start again at "Jon could hardly breathe."  
To skip the second instance, stop reading at "Were you there when she died, Ser Barristan" and start again at "And, he knew, she was taking precautions anyway."  
To skip the fear/risk of miscarriage, stop reading at, "She touched it with the fingertips of one hand," and start again at "Her fingers were soaked."  
To skip the character death, stop at "Then, when they reached the ship," and start again at "The pain of it was overwhelming."

Dany turned back from speaking rapidly to one of her Dothraki commanders behind her and shouted, "My people, Euron Greyjoy's fleet has been spotted twenty leagues from White Harbor. The city is preparing for attack by nightfall. Never let it be said that the Dragon Queen does not fight for the North." 

While the crowd yelled, Jon's mind spun. There was no way even the Dothraki could reach the city in time to defend it. But a dragon, flying at full-speed, with not a wasted moment....

Jon felt a surge of power, and Drogon roared a cry that was hungry for battle. 

_ No. _

Drogon was not ready to fly. He damned well wasn't ready to fight. 

Dany turned from the crowd, swung up onto the dapple horse, and took off at a gallop toward the dragons' nest. Without thinking, Jon sprinted away from his siblings and toward the black stallion she’d left standing by her men. He caught the startled horse's reins, hauled himself into the saddle, and dug in his heels. The black took off like a crossbow bolt, so much power under him that Jon was rocked backward until he got his seat.

He and the black pounded after Dany, seeing nothing but her, the receding crowd just a blur of noise and color. She rounded the corner of the castle walls, less than a minute ahead of him, but far enough that she didn't hear him shouting her name, her titles, whatever might get her to bloody _ wait. _ Chunks of dirty snow flew from her horse’s hooves, and her armor flashed darkly in the sun as she dashed left onto a narrow path that wove through the forest of Dothraki tents. He shortcut straight through the camp to cut her off, spurring the stallion to dodge around carts, leap latrine ditches, and even scatter a pack of angry washerwomen as she flashed in and out of his view. When he lost sight of her, he tracked her by the thud of hooves and the grunts of her heaving mount. The black narrowed her lead, and when the land opened up at the edge of the camps, he laid over his horse's shining neck and poured on extra speed. They were almost on her by the time the dragons spotted them. 

Seconds ahead of him, she reached the torn-up clearing where her children restlessly waited for her, reined in, and leapt off her horse Dothraki-style. He already had one foot out of its stirrup as he drew up, then he dropped off the saddle and hit the ground running. 

_ "Dany!" _he yelled again, right behind her. As she was stepping onto Drogon's already-dropped shoulder, he caught her arm and stopped her so firmly her braid flew in a circle around her. 

_ "Unhand me," _she snarled, and yanked her arm away. Drogon thrust his enormous maw down and thundered at him. Jon took a step back, wary at both their anger.

"You cannot do this!" Jon said to her.

Her eyes flashed rage. "I must and I _ will. _ That shark will sack the city if I don't break him at sea. I _ need _ his ships and I will take them."

"It's a trap," Jon yelled. "He could take any city on the coast, but he comes all the way to White Harbor? He knows you and the dragons and a massive bloody army are here. He's trying to draw us out." 

"I know," she said grimly, "That's why you're staying here with Rhaegal."

_ Fuck no. _

"You think you're going out there alone?!" he demanded. "On a dragon that can barely fly, much less dodge scorpion bolts and catapult shot, and the Gods know whatever else Greyjoy has waiting for you? It's madness!"

Dany sneered at him, the first time he'd ever seen that expression on her face. The dragons were stamping and trumpeting behind them, their agitation at the argument getting dangerous.

"Do you think I did all _ that," _ Dany said, pointing an accusing finger back at the castle, "to bring down Cersei Lannister just to let it go to ruin because I saved back no commander and no dragon to lead the forces I unified?" Her face went red and it was as though every emotion she'd kept leashed and hidden to win over the North came out at once. She leaned in and shouted right into his face, "I emptied my treasury, I honored honorless men, _ I traded my son's body _ for this fight, and it will become _ your _fight if I fail. Either this army goes to Cersei or she will come here, you know it's true!"

It _ was _ true, but he had to make her see reason. "Every single fighter and lord in the North, down to the foot soldiers, just knelt to you!" he said. "You don't have to take this risk."

"You're a fool if you believe that," she bit out. "No matter what they pledged to me in one breath, if I let White Harbor burn, _ your people _ will betray me with the next. I have no time to start over with them."

She wasn't wrong, he knew that. He could only guess how far along she was, but her belly would likely be rounded before she could win back the nobles if the biggest city in the North was razed while she did nothing. And then there'd be no sparing their babe from the label of bastardy, no matter who she married in a Southern sept. 

He heard the crunch of running footsteps in the snow behind them, and there was Gendry, jogging in a wide berth around the dragons, with a little winged black helm in his hands. Already on edge, the dragons both roared, full-throated, at the smith, who skidded to a stop and held his ground, looking terrified.

_ "Gendry," _she said sharply. "Approach." 

He looked wide-eyed at the dragons, then at Jon, seeking reassurance. Jon nodded at him, and the younger man tucked the helm under his arm so he could hold up both hands to display his harmlessness to the beasts. He crept forward, feet barely skimming over the snow, and when he could just reach her, he extended the helm to Dany with one hand while the dragons rumbled at him.

She took it from him and said, "Thank you, cousin."

Gendry bowed, blue eyes wide, and backed away until he was safe to turn around and hot-foot it back toward the keep.

"You'll want to legitimize him and give him Storm's End if I die," she said casually, as if she were talking about a pie going bad. She pulled the helm over her head, tucking the loose strands of her hair underneath it. Then she started walking away, as if the matter were settled, muttering, "I'd trade him, Arya, and Ser Brienne for the whole lot of you faithless Northmen."

_ He couldn't let her do this. _

She had one boot on Drogon's foot when Jon cried, "I know about the baby!"

She froze, her head and shoulders drooping down as if a great weight had just fallen onto her. The wind picked up and the few trees in the distance moaned in a sound like sorrow.

"Then you know why I have no time left," she said lowly, not turning to look at him. 

Drogon barked with impatience, and Jon was hit with panicked inspiration. "Ride Rhaegal," he said. "He's healed."

She put her foot back on the earth, _ thank the Gods, _but she turned her mournful face only to say, "You know I cannot. I'm not his rider."

"You can if I ride with you," Jon said.

For half a moment, her gaze turned inward and he saw her picture it, the two of them riding together, taking Euron's fleet in a scorching victory, minds flowing together like oceans of fire--and then she winced as if the thought stung and shook her head in a decisive _ no. _

Before she could speak her refusal, he stepped closer and said. "Let me protect you, Dany. Let me protect you both."

_ Please. Please. _

She glanced at Rhaegal, whose touch would show them each others' minds and hearts, dragging forth all the secrets they'd held close, then looked at him, truly _ looked, _ and finally let him see _ her. _ Barely concealed despair swept her features. 

She shook her head again, minutely, mouth in a trembling line.

_ "Dany," _he pleaded, "it'll work. It's the only way."

"I can't," she said. Maybe pregnancy was already making her weepy, because her violet eyes welled, and she said, "I can't bear it."

"Bear what?" he asked gravely, going one step closer, his heart in his throat.

"What you think of me. What you think of _ us." _ She dropped her gaze to her hands, which she'd brought to rest on her still-flat belly.

There would be none of that. 

He stepped closer and silently called Rhaegal. The dragon stretched his neck out to press his snout to Jon's left palm, and Jon gathered his focus, then reached out to Dany's perfect cheek with his right hand. Before she could flinch, he pushed all the love and hope and protectiveness in his soul through the bond and out to her, so she could not mistake his heart.

She gasped a tiny breath, her pupils blowing wide, and then closed her eyes. A tear streaked from each one, spidering her black lashes against her cheeks. 

"Let me protect you," he breathed._ "Please." _

She refused to meet his gaze, but she leaned into his gloved hand for one heartbeat before pulling away. He felt the push of her intentions, and Drogon grunted with annoyance and backed away. She followed her dragon and spoke to him in Valyrian. Jon got the impression she was telling Drogon to protect the people he was familiar with if they were attacked by outsiders, then she pressed her forehead to the dragon's cheek and said a few more words, including "Meereen."

Then, she turned and squirreled straight up Rhaegal's dropped wing, not waiting for the dragon to lift her. Jon felt too shaky to attempt it, and went to step onto Rhaegal's wingbone so his eager beast could carry him up. 

The second he put his booted foot onto the dragon, though, Jon was swamped with a feeling so overwhelming that he stumbled back.

It was a burning tumult, so vast and subsuming he could scarcely endure it. It pumped his body with adoration and desire, expanded his heart until it ached, filled his limbs with fiery longing. It was love--Dany's love for _ him. _

And her pain connected to that love felt like poison. Her rage, humiliation, misery, like a spear through the mind. 

He stared up at her in horror. She sat looking into the distance, regal mask in place again, swaying with Rhaegal's breath against the cold sky, as if Jon weren't even there. 

_ This _ is what she'd felt? How she had lived inside it? How had she _ hidden it? _

He thought, _ "Your sisters bring you a bowl of snow first thing in the morning. To protect you..." _

Rhaegal swung his big head around, trumpeted at him and clacked his teeth together. Jon looked at his dragon, looked back at Dany, licked his lips. He needed to ride with her. He needed to go into the fight with her, protect her back, be her--_ their-- _shield, and this might be what his mind would be filled with the entire time. 

He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and saw that Prince Quentyn and his men had come around the walls of the castle and into the camp, presumably to watch them go. Jon wasn't going to wait for the man to arrive. He carefully put his boot back up on Rhaegal's claws and felt a wash of relief and welcome from the dragon that briefly drowned out the storm in Dany's heart. Tinged with it was irritation at the sight of the Dornishman, whom the dragon loved as little as Jon did. Jon stepped onto Rhaegal's wing, the dragon raised him up to Dany, and he dropped in behind her, thighs pressed tight to hers.

Before he could even reach for a set of spikes, she called, "Soves!" and Rhaegal heaved himself across the broken ground, wings pumping fiercely to take off. As the dragon's body bucked to gain altitude, Jon had to fling his arms around Dany herself. He shut his eyes against the blasting wind, and as their bodies curled together, he was buffeted just as hard by the flood of her memories, each one blossoming into his mind like a poisonous flower. 

_ His enraged face as he said, "It's abomination! To gods and men." _

_ A massive Dothrakaan on the ground, staring blindly into the sun, Dany begging him to wake. _

_ His fury. "The stain could never be washed out." _

_ A sneering Essosi noblewoman. "You foul little things, inbred like dogs..." _

_ "Any child we had would be monstrous." _

_ A coldly triumphant old woman. "Monstrous. Twisted. I pulled him out myself. " _

Jon could hardly breath around her pain, and the agony of his remorse. The brutality of his words, the way they ricocheted against her worst moments like a knife slipping along ribs on its way to the gut... _ that _ was the monstrous act, not their love. As the waving, cheering ants on the other side of Winterfell fell away below them and the miles of moors to the southeast opened out ahead, he knew that he would find a way to make amends to her if he had to die doing it. 

Rhaegal screamed and shook his head as if pushing away the pain that was flowing between them. 

_ Want Mother! _he thought, and there was an edge of defiance to his mind.

Dany's memories blew away like animal tracks in a blizzard, and Jon opened his eyes. He had a moment to blink against the cold, bright sky and take in Dany in his arms and the White Knife flowing below them. Then, he flinched and struggled as Rhaegal's mind--not the gentle, sardonic presence he'd come to think of as his other half, but a force more powerful and vast than he'd ever imagined--intruded into his own and dragged through it like a hand sweeping through clear water. Jon reeled as he was inundated with images, emotions, sensations, even scents, all disconnected flashes, as if something were flipping through his life history as through pages in a book. Some of the impressions slowed and came into focus before being rejected, and others were examined more carefully. Jon and, he distantly felt, Dany, understood simultaneously that the dragon was pulling out his memories to show her. They immediately both tried to shove him _ out, out, away _ but then... _ Jon wasn't flying anymore. _

_ He was standing in a cave, and then walking through the camps, and sitting ahorse, and laying down in a ship's bed, and in a hundred other places, and everywhere he looked, he saw her. The sweet lines of her face in sunlight and candlelight, the music and power of her voice, her strength as she offered him her hand from Drogon's back, beyond the Wall. He stood, humbled, as she remade rebellious, suspicious armies into one loyal kingdom, and he ached with love as she whispered, "I would choose you, every day for a thousand years." He was in those places, breathing the air, watching her, touching her, believing in her with his whole heart. Her hand brushed like silk over his bare arm. He whispered "Sweetheart" into the delicate shell of her ear. Each moment passed as thick and golden as honey in sunlight, and filled him with a joy so long gone it felt alien. Her hair slipped through his hands as he loosened her braids with all the tenderness he had in him. She lay across his chest, tired and glowing, and then leaned her face up for a kiss. He kissed her on the breast, the collarbone, the mouth, murmuring into her skin. He knelt before her, worshipping between her bare legs, while she cried out and writhed-- _

Then it was all gone, and he was being buffeted by the wind and held a furious woman in his arms. She was raging and shouting something in Valyrian at Rhaegal, and he felt the dragon rebel against them both and then suddenly fold his wings completely to dive. He and Dany screamed in startlement before their minds were overpowered again. 

_ He was behind her tent as he was every morning on the journey, quietly double-checking her gelding's hooves and saddle girth. He was on the Kingsroad, staring his eyes sore at every hedge and bluff, every Northern peasant and soldier, in case they harbored a threat to her. He didn't like the look in the serving girl's eye, so he playfully stole her goblet and wouldn't give it back. He was drawing his sword to protect her in the great hall as men swarmed around them. He was telling her guards to double their watch over her. He was shouting at his siblings for disrespecting her, defending her in a cellar to Sansa, saying over and over to a dozen different Northern lords, "She will be the greatest ruler of our age. Watch her. See who she is." He snarled, " _ Ask yourself what I wouldn't do for her." _ And he sat on his bed, face in his hands, weeping and saying her name. _

At that, he was released again, like a hooked trout dropped back into the stream. He sucked in a breath and blinked. Rhaegal was flying steady again, over unfamiliar land. Dany pushed his arms off her, and he took a death grip on a pair of spikes. Rhaegal touched his mind again, and Jon thought, _ For fuck's sake, STOP! _ but the dragon only bridled, almost offended.

_ SEE! _Rhaegal demanded of them both.

_ He was having a snowball fight with his sisters in the godswood. He was racing across a green field against Robb. He was looking up into Father's solemn half-smile at some tiny thing Jon had accomplished. Catelyn Stark... he'd tried to hug her knees and she'd shoved him to the dirt. "You should never have been born," she hissed, "I wish you'd died, you cursed thing." "Jon is a dirty bastard, Jon is a dirty bastard!" Theon sang as he trotted past on his first horse. Septa Mordane primly declared, "Trueborn children are made of honor and duty, and sometimes even love. Bastards are made of lewdness and deceit." "You will not shame me by having that misbred creature of yours seated at our table. You will not!" "I want you to _ leave." _ There were his new brothers forevermore, all rapers and murderers and thieves. There was Ygritte dying in his arms. There was the word "TRAITOR" scrawled on the sign, there was _ Olly, _ and Jon was about to scream _ get out, get out, _ when his mind went blank and was his own again. _

_ SEE! _

Then the world tasted different, and unfamiliar images burst into Jon's brain, not half-unravelled from the fabric of his own past, but flung in sudden and struggling, like a string of gleaming fish.

It was his own face, over and over. Somehow, in these images, he was distorted, made strangely, almost unearthly, beautiful, like Dany, or a spectacular wild animal. The eyes of this not-Jon were large, liquid, near-black, and contained a thousand different expressions. Wonder, yearning, love, lust, devotion, fear, frustration, and, finally, blazing with rage and narrowed with disgust. At that last, the images were jerked away, and others were thrust into their place. His broken, scarred hand aglow in candlelight, like a sculpture in a sept, smoothing along a white hip. The shapes of his rare smiles--angles of the lips, the curl of his whiskers, the exact shine of sunlight on his teeth--observed from every possible vantage, as if looked for hungrily and hoarded for later. The line of his bare shoulder, as if seen from below, or above, dozens of times, oftentimes accompanied by a blurry little hand stroking the skin or white arms gripping him tight. Him defiant and rude in a throne room, and awash in torchlight under the carvings of the Children. Him glimpsed in the mines again, but sweating alongside Dany's men. Him with Northern peasants, teaching some trick with the sword. Him sparring with Arya, and bumping her forehead, then her shoulder. Him lounging against a ship's rail, talking some nonsense about Northern fairy tales. Him leaning on Ghost, and then Rhaegal, calling them _ good lad. _ Him speaking at the funeral after the battle, and then spinning her around in ecstasy when she'd agreed to marry him. He felt a rush of anguish at this, and the memories were snatched away again. Then he saw, over and over again, his _ arse _ of all things--under familiar breeches, just leaving a bath, next to a roaring fire in a tent, or warming beside an iron ship's stove. He pushed those views away himself, and got in turn images that made him blush, made him hard--him gazing upward while he had a mouthful of wet flesh, his body arching off a camp bed and seen from just above, little teethmarks left possessively on his neck, his cock from too many perspectives to count-- 

He shoved those away as well, dimly grateful Dany's back was armored so that he didn't have to figure out how to lean his pelvis back from her without plummeting to his death. At that thought, memories began to rise again, but he felt a push of intention from Dany that was so fierce it made his teeth ache, and all the images stopped. Their shared mind was hot with her fury at Rhaegal, and at him, and he felt how she was holding onto that blazing anger to block out the dragon from their minds. 

_ Wants Mother! _ Rhaegal was insisting to her, _ Want Jon! _She and Jon both pushed with their minds again, hard enough to make Jon wince, and Rhaegal seemed to give in.

_ Don't _ EVER _ do that again, _he thought at his dragon.

He heard, in his own voice, _ I love you and your mother. I will protect you both with my life. _

He thought, _ I do love you both, more than my own life, and I am here to protect you now. But what you just did is not the way. _

Rhaegal screamed angrily, but tucked his mind back behind its usual walls, and troubled them no more. Jon's head finally clearing, he squinted against the blasting wind and glanced down. Unfamiliar fields spread out below them, cut through with what was surely the White Knife, and the air smelled faintly of coastline. He realized with a shock that they must've been flying for hours. The memories Rhaegal had dragged them through must've happened in real time. Now, he was cold and hungry and thirsty, and--

Dany was shaking, her whole body quivering, he realized. Not with emotion--she was head to toe in heat-leaching metal armor without a coat or cloak. 

Bloody typical, he thought, that they'd dashed off to save White Harbor without stopping for supplies or cold weather gear. He immediately thought of throwing his cloak around her and tucking her against his chest. Would she allow it? Would she melt into him? Would she stab him in the leg for it?

He was startled when the thought, _ Fine, _echoed angrily through his head, clear as a bell, and she grabbed one edge of his cloak and drew it around herself. He brought the other side around her, tucked her against him, and held the cloak in front of her, leaning into her stiff, armored back to warm her. She didn't soften into him, but her shivering soon ceased as he and the cloak trapped her in a cocoon of warmth from knees to neck. 

_ But keep your thoughts to your bloody self, _that same mind hissed. He tried to obey, focusing carefully on the horizon surging up toward them with its sparkle of ocean, and on thoughts of what traps and weapons might be waiting for them on the water. But he couldn't help but think a bit on her memories. On their love for each other. No one, he was sure, had ever seen him so, had ever thought of him so much, and with such feeling. And then there was the babe, too, laying almost under his hands, inside her body that would ripen so exquisitely as their child grew. 

_ Stop it, _ her mind commanded, but all he could think in reply was _ I'm the father, I love-- _and she shoved him out again. 

"We have to talk about it some time," he said into her ear, and she yelled behind her, "We _ don't. _ You made yourself clear. Whatever you _ feel _ \--LOOK _ ." _

She pushed her hand outside his cloak and pointed down. They were almost at White Harbor, and perhaps three leagues south of the city, a forest of masts rose up under the horizon. Rhaegal banked hard toward the ships, and Dany and Jon both urged him skyward into a safe range for scouting. They rose to just below the belly of the clouds, and from that distance Jon estimated that there were some 100 ships in tight formation, of many shapes and sizes, all painted the soot black of Euron's armadas and flying the Kraken sail. All the little fishing boats and the larger merchantmen in the area had fled to a wide perimeter around the fleet, leaving an uneven circle, like the iris of a dead, open eye. Rhaegal made a crackling shriek like an oak tree being broken off at the root, and Jon felt fire stoking under their legs and in their mind. 

_ They'd fold their wings and fall like a falcon, make torches of the Greyjoy ships, _ eat _ the enemy... _

"No, you will _ not!" _Dany yelled at him. "Control your mind."

Then she thought at them, _ Those ships are _mine.

Jon somehow separated himself from the dragonish bloodlust that tended to swamp him when Rhaegal got angry, and looked more closely at the armada. Most of them had relatively clear decks, and the few men above-boards were milling around like wasps whose nests had been disturbed. At the very center of the fleet were a dozen ships that had canvas draped over something large near the bow--ballistas, almost certainly. Then, he blurred into his hunter's gaze and noticed an odd movement.

"Down there!" he yelled, pointing at an enormous war galley at the head of the fleet, one with a massive, kraken-shaped ram on the front. Poised on the bowsprit was something white that fluttered in the breeze. Rhaegal saw it and snapped his jaws.

"Is that a surrender flag?" he asked Dany, the frigid metal of her helm pressing his cheek.

"Not likely!" she yelled, the freezing wind almost tearing the sounds out of her mouth.

"We need to see what it is," he said. "Could ballistas in the middle of the fleet reach us from there?"

"Not the kind I saw on the Rush," she said, and added fiercely, "But we're not getting that close unless we're taking out the masts."

Then a ship's bell began its sharp clanging, and all the ships stirred with scrambling movement. On every black deck, the blacker square of an open hatch appeared, and on ship after ship after ship, something white appeared within each hatch and then moved toward the forecastles. Trepidation dragged through the bond, but Dany signaled Rhaegal to circle a bit lower, near the perimeter of the fleet, to get a better look. They dropped in closer, closer, the scent of the sea filling their noses, the creak of ships beginning to reach them. Then, a flash of female rage pulsed into his mind and both Dany and Rhaegal gave ripping snarls.

Jon looked closer, and saw that the white, fluttering objects now being attached to the bows of the ships weren't flags, they were _people. _Men, clothed in grimy white shirts and pants, gagged and bound, were yanking brutally against the ropes that held them to posts bolted to the bows. As they skimmed around to the head of the fleet, to where the flagship was surging toward the coast, they saw that the figure on the massive warship's prow was a woman in a fluttering white dress, with blood all down her chin and chest. Rhaegal tipped back into a hover to get a better look, and Jon felt a burst of gut-wrenching horror from Dany. 

_ It's Yara, _ she thought, _ and he's taken her tongue. _

Dany spurred Rhaegal with her mind to surge forward again, her hatred and anguish blending into the dragon's flaming rage. They were all roaring as they rose, and Rhaegal sighted on the flagship. They were going to _ burn _\--

_ STOP, _Dany commanded, and Rhaegal swerved up, coughing his flame back. Jon hung onto his set of spikes with all his might, clamping Rhaegal's torso with his legs to keep from sliding right down his tail.

When he got his seat again, Dany called back to him, "We save her if we can. I know it's a trap, but I won't leave her if I have any alternative, her or the other prisoners."

Jon shook his mind loose from Rhaegal's again and forced himself to concentrate. Getting the woman out would be a nightmare, and saving the rest would be far harder. If they broke the masts, the sailors would likely threaten or kill the prisoners. If they burned any of the ships, the rest of the prisoners would likely be executed. He stared down on the bay, flipping his gaze back and forth over the undulating green sides of his dragon, trying to see something, anything, that would give him a clue what to do. He saw the circular formation of black ships, the Greyjoy colors on booming sails, small and large ships together, few of them configured alike...

_ Seven Hells! _

"That's not the Iron Fleet," he exclaimed at Dany. He felt her startle. "Look at the ships!"

He urged Rhaegal down a bit, and it became easier to see. There were too many shapes. The fleet was a hodgepodge--merchant galleys, probably, and whalers, fishing cogs, even some big trading carracks, all probably captured vessels with their decks cleared, painted, and hung with the trappings of warships, cleverly disguised to look like a single force from a distance. 

"That explains the skeleton crews--they're meant to be a sacrifice," Dany said disgustedly. "Like the prisoners. Like Yara." Jon could feel her frustration rising and bleeding into his own mind. "There's no telling what they have belowdecks--troops or something worse. We rescue Yara if we have any chance of it, and then we go with the plan. We start breaking the masts on the edge of the fleet and work our way in."

He pushed the image of hidden ballistas at her. "The ones in the center with the covered decks--we burn them first, prisoners or no." He felt her reluctant assent through Rhaegal, and the dragon screamed with joyous anticipation.

At his mental nudge, they spiraled up around the perimeter of the fleet like a leaf in a whirlwind, Jon holding Rhaegal in check, reminding the dragon that there would be no fire just yet. They picked up speed, Jon keeping sharp eyes to the back and sides for dragon-killing weapons on the rest of the armada, squinting hard against the salt-smelling wind that tore at their faces. Most of the fake warships looked practically empty, with just a handful of men on each one. Jon's uneasiness rose and rose like bile in the belly, until they sailed just over Yara Greyjoy on the way to their target. He saw that the reaver queen was whipping her head back and forth in agony. 

Then he thought, _ Not pain _ . She was telling them _ NO. _

Jon shoved the picture of Yara soundlessly shaking her head _ No, no _ toward Dany's mind, and urged Rhaegal back up out of projectile range. He felt Dany go cold inside, and the dragon roared in frustration They began circling, trying to puzzle out what was wrong and how to deal with it. 

Through the bond of the dragon's mind, he could feel Dany struggling to solve the riddle they were looking at, to find any way to save her friend and the helpless men. After what might have been a quarter hour, he felt Dany's mind and body simultaneously slump with defeat, and her thoughts helplessly chanted, _ I don't want to lose her, please, not one more, not her too. _

Jon unthinkingly drifted into Dany's surging memories of her ally. The brash, seductive captain stood in a throne room and bargained to become her equal, then took her arm in a powerful, oar-muscled grip. Yara stalked a deck beside her, telling jokes most inappropriate for queens, making both of them snort with laughter. The woman sat at a rough table, talking with ungrudging respect to Grey Worn, Missandei, and other former slaves, working out how she would tell her people that she'd traded their raping and roving to gain their sovereignty. She argued in the war room about tactics, always on the side of strength.

_ I trust her, _ Dany thought, despairingly, _ I trust her and I can't betray her trust in me. _

Jon felt Dany's heart squeeze with grief, then go stony, her anguish burning off into the rage of dragonflame. 

"Whatever this is," she said over the wind, her voice bitter as cold steel, "we end it. We can't save Yara without destroying the ballistas, but they'll likely kill her if we attack. We still must attack."

Jon unthinkingly imagined pressing a kiss of relief and gratitude into Dany's cheek, and stopped himself, but she'd already caught his thought and it made her anger flare higher. 

_ Down, _ she thought, _ and BURN. _

She flattened herself on Rhaegal, tugging herself right out of Jon's arms so that he had to scramble for the spikes again, and the dragon raked back his wings to dive. The wind of flight went from fierce to blasting, and Jon could barely slit his eyes open to see what lay below them. They barreled straight for the center of the fleet, the black pupil of the swaying eye of ships below them. Rhaegal's body got hot, hotter, burning under him, and their minds flamed.

_ Yara Greyjoy would die, those prisoners would die, because of some sick deception of Euron Greyjoy. They'd destroy the ships, the sailors, and Gods help the Crow-Eye if they saw him, because they'd obliterate him on his deck or boil him in the sea. _

The sailors on their targets were scrambling toward the rails, not even trying to get the scorpions or lifeboats ready in time, just leaping overboard and swimming like rats. The sight of the escaping Greyjoy sailors infuriated Rhaegal, and the heat of his mind flamed hotter, stoked their rage higher. They couldn't wait, they wanted them _ now, _ to _ kill and burn, _and instead of getting close and aiming true for just those ships, they opened their mouth and loosed a long road of flame through the fleet, first lighting a wave of sails and masts, then a deck, then--

The world turned green.

* * *

They screamed, their combined voices a clamoring chorus of terror inside the roar of the wildfire. Rhaegal writhed in the air, trying to flee the green nightmare that clung to his wings, belly, and legs. _ He couldn't get it off, off, OFF, it chased-- _

_ To shore! _ Dany was screaming in their heads _ , We need wet sand! _

Jon came to his senses just enough to realize his boot was on fire, and his cloak, so he scrambled to tear them off without wiping the clinging flames onto anything or anyone else. The boot dropped away and vanished toward the sea, but the cloak caught on Rhaegal's shoulder and caused his dragon even more pain. 

Then Jon heard a faint _ thwip, _like the snap of a child's bowstring, and he instinctively shoved Dany down while urging Rhaegal into a dive through the forest of masts. The dragon roared as some kind of bolt whistled over their heads, and then Jon banked Rhaegal hard toward the shore again. Jon looked back to see a dozen other ballista bolts flying toward them, and he urged Rhaegal to dodge down, their only hope. Their flight stuttered and jerked as wingtips smashed the tops of a dozen masts. The ships they'd hit rocked below them, splashing, and a few shot up gouts of green flame behind them. Dany shouted with voice and mind, and Rhaegal pulled up again, higher, higher, dodging hard left and right around new fountains of fire that blasted in front of them.

They soared well past the perimeter of the fleet, a comet blazing toward shore, but the bolts still kept hissing past them. Dany desperately held Rhaegal back from diving into the sea, which would only spread the wildfire without extinguishing it and would drown her in her armor. They flew for what seemed like a year, jibing erratically at Jon's direction to confuse the shooters and evade bolts, the cries Rhaegal was making horribly reminding them all of Viserion's vibrating death-cry when he'd plummeted toward the ice lake beyond the Wall.

When they neared the beach, Jon and Dany braced themselves to be thrown, knowing what was coming. Rhaegal, barely sane, was able to skid right down onto his belly before he shook them off, but the fifteen feet or so to the packed sand of White Harbor's shore made for a shattering landing. Jon clenched his body around Dany's, holding her tight, and they flew through the air. They hit the beach with a blinding explosion of particles and then his arms were empty. He rolled, came up sputtering, and saw only a wall of writhing dragon, desperately smothering the flames on his lower body. 

Jon staggered to his feet, frantic to find Dany, knowing what a fall could do to a pregnant woman. Behind the groaning dragon's legs, he spotted her laying motionless at the water's edge, the tide rolling up to her still body. He sprinted for her, and dropped to his knees in the wet beside her. Terror filled his chest when he saw the sand reddening in a rapidly expanding scarlet puddle behind her head. He reached for her still face, reaching for life, for love, for everything he could lose forever. When his fingertips touched her, her skin was burning hot in the cold air. Her eyes flickered open, and she groaned. 

She wrinkled her nose and slowly reached up a hand, pushing his aside. 

_ "No," _she muttered. "I'm all right."

The held breath wheezed out of him as if he'd been punched. _ Thank the Gods. Thank them all. Now, please, for just one more thing, please. _

Dany went to sit up. He instantly reached to help her, gently pulling her torso out of the wet sand, her backplate rasping on pebbles. 

"What about the baby?" he rasped. "Is--"

She shook her head blearily and said, "There's no pain down there. I need to get _ this _ off first." She tugged at her helm, and he immediately got his fingers under its edges and started working it off her. It was stuck in the back, the smooth metal seemingly wedged over her bloody silver braid, and he gently put his fingers between the metal and her skull, looking for the stuck bit and the source of her injury. 

Near the back of her neck, he touched something odd-shaped, and she said, "Ouch!" 

He bent to look under her scarlet-stained hair and spotted the trouble--a sharp, bloody chunk of wood the size of a man's thumb. It must've blown up from an exploding ship and jammed itself into the narrow gap between her hair and helm. He looked carefully at how the ragged tip of it had gone into her flesh, and said, "Easy. You've got a splinter big as a spearhead in you. I'm going to get it out." He loosened her helm a little more, then took hold of the back of her head with one hand and tugged the wood free with the other. Dany hissed with pain, but it came out cleanly, leaving a nasty open wound and a flow of blood from her slashed scalp down the back of her neck. 

His rage at Euron Greyjoy flared again, but he distracted himself from it by gently removing her now-freed helm and handing it to her. With her mussed hair and red eyes, she suddenly looked like a vulnerable girl again instead of a warrior. Funny, he thought, how she was really always both. While she looked away, he took his clean kerchief from his pocket, folded it into a long band, and tied it around her neck in a such a way that it would squeeze at least a little on the wound and soak up the blood. 

She touched it with the fingertips of one hand, then set her helm in the sand and said, "Help me up. I have to check for blood." 

He knew where she meant. Lifting her as if she were delicate as a sliver of spring ice, he got her standing. She shook her head again to clear the haze of the fall, reached under the bottom of her chest plate, and started loosening the strings of her quilted breeches. Her little hands fumbled from shaking, so he took over for her, not immune to the act of undoing her breeches once more.

His thoughts about such, and the face-heating intimacy of undressing her, were not honorable, not good, he knew, but he couldn't bring himself to care. She was _ alive. _And if he were very lucky, their child was alive, too. How could anything else matter?

When he got the placket of her trousers opened, he took away his hands and she reached in with her clean one, which was trembly and white. She angled her wrist to get under her smallclothes, and then her face crumpled. Jon's heart fell as she let out a half-sob, eyes closed, shaking her head.

"There's a lot of blood," she whimpered. 

"We can..." he started to say, _ we can get you to a maester, we can save her, we can try again, _and that was madness, but he didn't care-- 

She slowly withdrew her fingers, eyes closed. 

She opened her eyes as she opened her little fist, already flinching from the sight of the thick womb blood. 

The blood that wasn't there.

Her fingers were soaked, but in clear, shiny fluid, so much that it stretched in delicate strings between her fingers. 

They both started breathing again at the same time. 

_ Her _ arousal _ . From their memories, from-- _

He looked into her eyes, which were still brilliant with unshed tears, and took her wrist reverently in his hand. He had the wild urge to take her fingers between his lips and let the familiar salt-sweet flavor of her fill his mouth, his mind, push out every other thought until he could simply show her with his body how madly he loved her, how happy he was that they'd all survived. She seemed to read his eyes and yanked her hand away like an offended septa. She turned toward the incoming waves and knelt to scrub her hands in the sandy water that was rushing around their feet. 

_ Feet. _He looked down. Not only was he cloakless, he was bare-footed on the left side, his sock taken with the boot into the ocean.

Achingly relieved but feeling like a right dolt, he turned to Rhaegal, who had churned up an enormous stretch of the beach behind them. The dragon looked to be fully extinguished and was laying on his belly in the damp sand, muttering to himself. Jon made his way around to the dragon's head, limping and flinching from sharp rocks under his naked foot, and saw that the dragon's scales were badly blackened all along his sides and presumably below. 

The dragon sensed him coming and thought at him, _ HATE SHIPS. _

Jon chuffed, hearing Dany's feet hushing through the sand toward them, and said, "Aye, I hated those ships, too. How badly are you injured?"

Rhaegal snorted. _ INJURED? NOT. _Pain gone, ANGRY.

Dany stopped a bit near the dragon's ribs, then came around to Rhaegal's head and put out her arms. Her child thrust his nose toward her for stroking as she murmured at him in Valyrian, comforting and motherly. Then she laughed at something the dragon communicated to her and replied, "Go wash, my son. Get the foul stuff off you."

The dragon heaved himself up, rising like a building over them, and legged his way into the ocean, moaning discontentedly all the way. When he got out into deep water, he dunked himself in and shook, shoving the tide yards further up the beach. 

Jon said, "He was screaming before. You sure he's all right?"

She snorted so like Rhaegal that Jon had to suppress a laugh. She said, "Fire cannot kill a dragon, not even wildfire. It stung like acid, but I cleaned off some of his blackened scales and it left only soot and ash. They didn't seem cracked or melted." She paused and gazed off behind him at the place where the false fleet would land within the hour if they didn't take action. Her face went bleak. 

"I didn't think any of this through," she finally said, not looking at him. "I failed utterly to see Greyjoy's traps. We all could've been killed."

"Neither of us thought it out," he admitted. "But we have to finish it. Whatever game he's playing, those ships can't land."

She nodded tiredly. "And then we need to get back to Winterfell the second we can. Cersei could’ve sent a raft of assassins up the White Knife to arrive while we were here. Let's talk about what went wrong, and what else he has up his sleeve."

Without discussing it, they walked up the beach to the first dry dune and sat side by side, watching the dragon sluice water over himself in great swamping waves and sprays, like a scaled whale, and they dissected how they'd buggered the mission: They had allowed themselves to be drawn into the center of the fleet. They had gotten distraught about the prisoners, Yara most of all. They had missed all the functioning ballistas, which had somehow been hidden out of sight, belowdecks perhaps, or disguised as something innocuous. There were things that were strange, too, that troubled them--the struggling men, most of all. They hadn't behaved like normal prisoners, they agreed. Every one had thrashed at his bonds like a beast, continuously, even after he'd been tied for some time.

"That's what's nagging at me," Dany said, dark brows furrowing. "Perhaps they were drugged or madmen, and are meant to attack us if we freed them, but I keep thinking that I ought to be recalling something, something I heard weeks ago. Something Ser Jorah said, I think."

Realization flashed in Jon's mind. "Not what he said--what he had. He had greyscale."

He saw the same horrible idea strike Dany. "One of Euron's ships was spotted outside the Doom. Where the Stone Men are." She looked sick. "Those men are likely mad with it. Not Yara, though, it wouldn't have had enough time to spread to her mind."

"He wants us to try to rescue her, you know that," he said. "Do you think she wants to be rescued, knowing that she's got it? She was shaking her head _ no." _

"I have to give her a choice," Dany said fiercely. "I have to tell her that a cure exists. Even if she could never speak again, she could live."

He'd known Dany would want to try. Of course she would. "Then we tell her without boarding that ship. We don't touch it, we don't get near it."

"I can't catch the disease," she speculated. "I could drop onto the deck--"

"There's probably wildfire on every ship in that false fleet, and the crew is probably fanatics who would either light it under your feet or boil up from the hold and slit your throat the moment you hit the boards."

"We could commandeer one of the fishing boats on the perimeter--"

"Wildfire would wreck it if you got that close," he reminded her.

"Rhaegal could get close enough to pull her off with his claws and--"

"Wildfire," he interjected.

She'd been gripping handfuls of the sand as she thought, scrubbing the grit between her fingers, and she clenched her fists. "The only thing I can think to do is hover close and shout it at her. Not much of a plan, if she can even hear either of us over the wind of Rhaegal's wings."

He said, "It's better than the fishing boat idea--"

Dany startled. He looked at her, head cocked. "What?"

"The fishing boats," she breathed. "The big ones. And the merchantmen. That's where the ballistas are. Not the ships in the fleet. The boats that looked like they'd fled White Harbor. The civilian ships."

It made sense. "Think we'll find the Crow-Eye on one of them?" 

She bared her pearly little teeth. "Whether we see him or not, every ship still in range of the false fleet, down to the rowboats, is going up in flames. If he's roasted onboard, that's just good luck."

Jon had to agree. There could be no legitimate reason for any small boat to stay near the armada at this point. The only thing left was to plan. 

In the end, it was simple enough. They rode a still-dripping, vengeful Rhaegal high into the clouds, approaching the false fleet under their cover, then dropped down like they'd been shot from a catapult to obliterate every civilian boat still circling the fleet. Dany had been right--all the little fishing boats were well gone, and they dodged ballista bolts from the remaining trader ships all the time they were roaring through the air. Jon watched their back and sides as Dany guided them jinking and banking across the sky The wind was full of the clatter of flying timbers and the bellow of explosions. Rhaegal shrieked once and Jon felt an echoing pain from Rhaegal's tail, but the dragon still flew, cooking his enemies all the hotter.

When the last of the outer boats was a flaming scatter of flotsam, they flew down and kept as low as possible before torching the black-sailed armada from the sides, starting with the back of the formation. Every ship lit up with a vertical column of green fire, clearly channeled through some kind of pipe to burn a dragon flying above it. Then, when they reached the ship that held the pirate queen, it was too late. She hung collapsed and grey from her chains, the white dress soaked to the hem with her drying blood. 

Rhaegal simply said of her,_ Smells dead. _

Though the both of them had been tightly controlling their thoughts, at the moment Rhaegal lit up the ship carrying Yara's body, Jon felt Dany's grief as if it were his own. The pain of it was overwhelming, and through wordless urges, he felt that she would let him hold her through it. He wrapped his arms around her, and took over guiding Rhaegal, so she could weep. 

When the last of the ships were irretrievably sunk, they fled the bay and dropped onto the battlements of New Castle. Dany's eyes now dry and cold, they called for Manderly's steward, and ordered that the city guard should thoroughly inspect all boats and sailors that landed until the war ended, quarantine any that looked the slightest bit suspect, and put the populace on the alert for any castaways from the battle. At Dany's request, the man was kind enough to commandeer a cloak and pair of boots for Jon from an awed guard who was of similar size, and Jon asked for food and drink and a fur cloak for her.

As they inspected the minor wound to Rhaegal's tail, people gathered around the base of the keep, shouting thanks and epithets like "Hail the dragon king!" that both he and Dany did their best to ignore. By the time they mounted up and were soaring silently over the city, they were relieved enough that their minds became quiet and soft to each other. 

Jon's conflicted mind simply echoed, over and over, _ Thank the Gods you're all right. _

As soon as White Harbor fell behind them and the gloaming moors stretched out ahead of them, Jon felt Dany shiver again and wordlessly wrapped his borrowed cloak around hers. She accepted his protection without comment. The gesture had not-so-subtle connotations, though, that stirred his mind painfully again, leaving him aswirl with thoughts about what in the Hells he was supposed to do about the coming child. 

Dany surely noticed, because he felt a surge of quiet despair, and a memory rolled into his mind. A white-haired knight with a kind of fatherly gruffness was riding beside Dany at the head of a sun-blasted column of Unsullied. The land around them was mostly sand, cut occasionally with skinny, desiccated trees.

_ "Were you there when she died, Ser Barristan?" Dany asked. "When I was born?" _

_ "To my everlasting sorrow, I was not," the old man answered, face solemn. "I could not have saved your mother from the tragedy that befell her, but I would have liked to have given her comfort in her last moments. It was tragic how she both lived and died. For every child of hers who survived, she lost three others before they drew breath." _

Dany's message was clear, and made him ache with cold that had nothing to do with the wind: His child, like her first, might be unlikely to live. 

And, he knew, she was taking precautions anyway to give their son or daughter a father, should it survive. Tyrell, surely--

_ Or me, _ he fiercely thought, _ it should be-- _ but he stopped himself. He could not. He knew he could not, not without thrusting them into far worse dangers than they already faced.

There was that swamp of her feelings again--grief and overwhelming love and now a kind of bitter indignation. She stayed with him under the warmth of the cloak, but he could feel her spiteful urge to fling it off herself.

Jon swallowed hard, feeling as if he were in a snowstorm that he couldn't see his way through. No matter what he _ wanted, _ it did not erase the problem of their blood tie. It did not erase the deadly danger to all three of them if someone revealed his identity, and it did not change the baby's origins. How many families had lost their men over Cersei Lannister's incestuous bastards? What army would storm the Red Keep the moment they were found out? How many Dothraki and Unsullied could be posted around the royal nursery? Would Dany or his child ever have a moment's peace or safety if he claimed them, or would they always be haunted by knives in the dark?

Rhaegal quivered and gave a little cry, pushing into their minds the image of a herd of elk on the ground below them. The dragon was suddenly voracious, and they needed to let him hunt and eat before he ferried them back to Winterfell. They leaned low as the dragon plummeted, and Jon braced himself as Rhaegal's heat stoked under his legs. They swooped over the panicked, stampeding animals and loosed their flame, blasting a satisfying swath down the center of the herd. Rhaegal skidded to a landing in a clearing, and Jon and Dany dismounted so the dragon could wander back and eat his fill in peace.

It was both a relief and painful to stop touching the dragon with her and lose the connection of their minds. Jon had never felt truly at home with anyone else, and their mind's intimacy, though they were fighting and grieving, was still better than being without her. The dragon gorged, making horrible wet crunches as he ate the massive prey nearly whole, and Dany stayed beside him to talk mother to son. Left to himself in the pinewood-smelling evening, Jon walked into the quiet forest to gather his thoughts.

He sat on a rock and stared up at the rising moon, watching the stars slowly blink into existence, one by one. He'd have given anything to talk to Eddard Stark right now, or Maester Aemon, or even his real father and mother, the fools who'd started all this. 

No good solution to their problems presented itself. He thought briefly that he might propose a political marriage to her, one that was chaste but allowed them to live together at least sometimes, and allowed him to be a father to their child. But one thought of what it did to them to be near each other, of his possessive love, and the animalistic lust that rose up in him on the beach, and he knew it would be impossible. She was tormented, and he'd been becoming _ less _ resigned to holding himself back from her all this time, not more. The presence of their child would only make him want her more. They could never be happy in such an arrangement, and it would not do to raise a child in such a way.

And what if he simply followed them to King's Landing after the war, became a friend or a mentor to the child, loving and helping them without claiming them, doing just the opposite of what Ned Stark had done? Dany and her husband would have to consent, and he would have to forever watch his child being fathered by the other man, for good or ill. But if the child resembled him in any real way, it would surely come to light, or follow the poor little one with rumors throughout their life. 

As the snapping of bone and contented grunts that marked Rhaegal's meal began to slow, he felt the dragon call to him. He traced his way back to him, and Dany was standing near Rhaegal, silently communing with him as he ate. Jon had the feeling the dragon was chastened, and when he went to them, Dany said, "He won't do that again, the trick with our memories."

"I'm sorry he did it at all," Jon said. "He was trying to help."

They both looked down at the snowy ground as Rhaegal whistled sadly at them between bites. 

"Will it be Tyrell?" he finally asked, the question heavy as stone in his mouth. 

She squared herself and said, looking pained, "No. It must be the Prince."

The news staggered him. He stepped closer to her, breath shuddering in his chest. He saw the man's sly smile, his black eyes narrowed in hatred, his bared teeth as he struck for the eyes. _"Him? No._ _Dany! _He's an evil man. You can't--"

Her gaze froze over. "What choice have you given me? Not one person in Willas' line or mine is dark of hair or eye. If the child has your coloring, there will be no hiding her origins. The Prince will provide a cover, and he brings an army and Dorne with him."

He clenched his trembling fists, his jaw, his heart, barely holding back the terrible temptation to just give in and doom them all. He managed to try for reason. "He's vicious, and vengeful, and he lives for power. You and the babe will always be in danger from him."

She lifted her jaw at him, eyes fierce and tragic. "Do you think I don't know that? Do you think _ anyone _in my whole life except a handful of people have not been ready to kill me or exile me or take everything from me if it would give them more power? It is a Queen's lot. It will be my daughter's lot, too, no matter who her father is."

_ A daughter, then, _ he thought bitterly, _ a little daughter he was supposed to abandon without his protection and love. _

She looked at Rhaegal, her eyes flickering over his great bulk in the dark. "The Prince will be loyal as long as he requires me and her, and I intend to make him require us forever. And, my line with him might create more dragon riders. They can take up Drogon and even Rhaegal, after you and I are gone. If..." She stopped, and cut her eyes away. "If your children do not."

He shook his head angrily, "I could never be with another woman after--"

She glared at him, eyes fiery again. "Stop it. Dragons live for hundreds of years. If my line dies out, you will have to either provide them with riders or they will go feral and burn the world. I named you Lord of Dragonrider Keep for a reason. Think on that reason. Now, we have to leave."

She mentally pushed at Rhaegal, who tossed his head to throw the last, shredded carcass down his gullet and offered his wingbone to Dany to ride. Jon followed her up, and they took off in a lazy, powerful surge, the fragrant, cold night sky swallowing them and embracing them. Rhaegal's feelings pushed through him again--churning worry over his mother, whose own mind now seemed like a roaring river concealed under a thick layer of ice, joy at flight, the bloody satisfaction of battle and a good meal, and the lingering ache in his tail from the minor wound. Jon sent consoling feelings, and did his best to keep his thoughts to himself, but they circled and howled like a rabid dog. 

_ The Prince's rage as he lunged for Jon's eyes. _

_ That same rage at a little girl with Arya's face. _

_ Jon safe in his castle, while his child and woman were alone, under seige in King's Landing. _

_ Poison in the kitchen, knives in the dark. _

_ Crowds baying for sullied blood. _

_ A line of black-haired Targaryen children, growing madder with each passing year. _

Every path forward felt like a mistake he could never come back from. Dishonor and danger waited for him at one fork of the road, and a lifetime of heartache waited at the other, and the latter was somehow worse. 

And even if Dany was right about the Prince--that he would accept the baby and bow to Dany--what about Jon himself? He knew that all the North, and half the rest of the country, when the kingdoms were won, would be sending their daughters and granddaughters to make eyes at him when he was a lonely young Lord Paramount in his new keep, with his good name and legendary dragon and ancient sword. He even knew that some of those women would be charming and pleasant and strong, even lovable. But how could he marry one while carrying in his heart what Dany was to him, what she was to the world? Could he honor some other wife, truly honor her, or would he feel like a fraud his whole life, bedding a woman to gain heirs while he was as poisonously fixated on his lost one as Robert Baratheon had been?

It was deep night when they neared Winterfell, and in the hour or so in which they had left to fly, he felt both Dany and Rhaegal begin to become uneasy. The dragon squirmed and chuffed in the air, and Dany's mind sparked like resin in a fire.

_ Something's happened, _ Dany finally thought at him. _ Drogon's angry, and people are gathered around him in a way he doesn't like. _

_ Battle? _he thought at her.

_ I don't think so, _ she thought, and Jon felt her deep disquiet through the bond. _ It feels like... like it did when I took Quentyn to him. _

That was not good. 

He urged Rhaegal to fly faster, despite his long day, and for the rest of the flight he could feel the anxiety of his dragon and co-rider bleeding into him. Rhaegal was simmering--angry on his brother's behalf, ready to roast something as soon as he hit the ground, and Dany was sending soothing urges, barely convincing, through the bond.

Miles from Winterfell, he saw that the dragons' nest was lit again with a ring of torches, as it had been the dreadful night he'd flown away on his own. Rhaegal screamed a greeting down to his brother, and Drogon shot up a short gout of flame in response. That was _ definitely _ not good. They began spiraling down, lower, lower, sweeping their vision across the ground for what in the Hells had gone wrong. 

There was a human body in the dragons' nest. 

It was wearing a yellow coat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first instance of mention of past stillbirth and miscarriage was a mention of Dany's loss of Rhaego.  
The second instance was a mention of Dany's mother.  
The fear/risk of miscarriage scene was Dany figuring out whether Boatbaby was OK, and she was.  
The character death, as you can guess, is Yara. I thought for a long, long time about how to avoid this death, and the horrible trope it plays into. I failed to find a solution for this chapter and things later in the plot that hinge on this death. I plan to write another fic in the future that serves Yara as she deserves.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, friends, and expect more soon. Your comments and kudos make my life (and more writing).
> 
> You can also catch me on Tumblr as janeeyre1847-writes.


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